


The Silences Between Us

by AstridContraMundum



Series: Ask Me No More [1]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alcohol Abuse, And two dashes of Ride, Cold War drama, Gen, Period-Typical Homophobia, The Thursdays adopt Morse, Two dashes of Quartet, brief allusion to suicide, case-fic, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2019-11-15 15:38:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 105,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18076175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: A mass shooting at Lonsdale College leaves the men of the Cowley CID baffled.There’s only one survivor.And he’s not talking.Not even to give his name.





	1. Chapter 1

 

Thursday had not seen the like of it since he came to Oxford. No, not even during his days in the Smoke.

 

The scene was a study in contrasts. A fine, high-ceilinged room, with walls painted the color of old vellum, dark wooden furniture, shelves of cloth-bound books, deep chairs covered in rich brocades, and curiosities carved of alabaster and ebony.

It must have been beautiful.

But, now, it lay in ruins. Now, it was a wasteland of broken glass, bullet holes, and splattered blood. Fragments of china vases—and the flowers they once held—were scattered over ten lifeless bodies that lay sprawled across the polished floor.

 

No, he had not seen so many dead young men since North Africa, since the war.

 

Even Dr. DeBryn, who was always so impassive, so calm amidst the chaos, seemed to startle at the sight—his breath caught for a moment in one sharp, but quickly silenced intake, high in his throat.

 

Two dons and eight students. Most of the students appearing to be undergraduates, barely past twenty.

Thursday strode over to a desk set in the corner, stepping carefully so as not to disturb the bodies. The desk had been placed diagonally, near an arching doorway, so that it overlooked the room.

The work surface was a riot of books and notebooks and portfolios. Loose white papers drifted over the stacks—much like the shorn white feathers of a dove that had been slain by a fox, wafting and blowing forlornly over the grass.

 

Thursday picked the papers up, shuffling them about, looking for he knew not what. Was one of the dons involved in something, something over his head, something to bring on such a bloodbath?

 

Dr. DeBryn, meanwhile, had made his way across the room and was now crouched nearby, where two bodies lay in a tumble.

He checked the first body, and then, ever so gently, rolled it off of the other, that of a slender young man with wavy, tawny hair.

Then, he paused.

He put his fingertips to the side of the young man’s throat. At the brush of the doctor’s hand, two impossibly, large, blue eyes flew open. Thursday’s heart missed a beat at the sight; it was like watching a corpse come back to life.

 

“I need you to call for an ambulance,” Dr. DeBryn said. “Now.”

 

********

The two dons, it transpired, were called Clive Durrell and Michael Adams; both taught maths at Lonsdale.

Clive Durrell, whose home had been the site of the shooting, lived alone; he had no family. Adams was married, but his wife could give no explanation through her tears. She could offer only her sorrow, not a hint of a reason. 

 

Although nine dead? What reason could there possibly be?  

 

Nine dead.

 

And that was another odd thing.

 

On the desk, Thursday had found a records log left open, ready to be inscribed with notes on a meeting of the Lonsdale College Moral Science Club. The page was blank, save for a list of all members present. 

 

The minutes for the meeting of the second of June, 1965, listed nine people in all: the two dons, who were chairs of the club, the name of one student, who was the recording secretary, and six others. 

 

The names of the seven slain students listed in the log matched up, one by one, with the IDs that were in the wallets found on each of the victims.

 

That, at least, was a small mercy; Dr. DeBryn need show the grieving parents only the body of the student who must certainly be their son—they would not be forced to go through the complete roll call, as it were.

It was a small mercy, having the names provided in a log book, but it was also a puzzle.

 

Because, who, then, was the eighth student—the young man who had survived the slaughter, the only one of the group who was found without a wallet, or, for that matter, any other form of identification?

 

***********

Mr. Bright stood before the three of them—Thursday, Sergeant Jakes, and Constable Strange— with a pegboard full of photographs behind him.

“There are many things about this case that are unclear," he said.  "Clive Durrell’s study is a veritable library of documents, many of which appear to pertain to his mathematical studies, and are mostly, it seems, written in Greek. We’ll have to have send for someone from the colleges to go over them, but we’ll need to keep in a hand. Sergeant Jakes? I can trust you, I take it, to oversee all such matters?”

Jakes slowly lowered his cigarette for the corner of his mouth.  

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“The one point I cannot stress enough,” Mr. Bright continued, “is that no one is to reveal to the press the fact that one of the students has managed to survive. The last thing we want is a panicked gunman coming into the Radcliffe to finish the job. If I see one mention of the boy in any of the papers, I’ll come looking, and I won’t stop until the man responsible finds himself at the end of the career. Understood?”

“Sir,” Thursday and Strange chorused.

But Jakes grimaced. “Are we sure it wasn’t him, sir? It would be a convenient cover, wouldn’t it? Shoot his classmates and dons and then shoot himself, to make himself look like a victim?”

Mr. Bright scowled faintly at the interruption, but answered all the same. “The weapon used would suggest not,” he said tersely.

“Unless his arms are about seven feet long,” Thursday said ruefully.

 

Jakes' dark brows drew together at that, but he nodded, curtly, conceding the point.

 

“Thursday, I’ll leave it to you to arrange inquiries among some of the students who may have known the deceased—to see if anyone has any information as to anything untoward, or if they might otherwise shed any light,” Mr. Bright said. “Of course, our best hope lies with the young man in hospital. With any luck, he got a good look at the gunman—he might even have known his assailant.”

“Seems likely, doesn’t it?” Jakes said, taking another drag on his cigarette. “That is was personal? Who else would bother targeting a group as obscure as the _Lonsdale College Moral Science Club_?”

Jakes’ contempt for the college boys was clear in his voice, and while—at times—Thursday found himself sympathetic, in this case, it wore on his nerves. Privileged set or not—their status certainly didn’t help those young men last night.

 

Those who met such violent ends deserved a modicum of respect for the suffering they must have endured, if nothing else.

 

Mr. Bright seemed to be thinking along the same lines, but he chose to take what Jakes said at face value—to accept his point while overlooking any mockery implied in the making of it.

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Bright said, “There you are. The whole thing might come together on just one name given by the survivor.”

 

“I’ll start there, then, sir,” Thursday said. “I’ll head over to the Radcliffe. See if the lad is awake and about.”

“Very well then,” Mr. Bright said.  “Carry on.”

 

******************

“He’s been up since this morning, but he still hasn’t spoken,” the ward sister confided, bustling him down a long, white corridor, one that smelt faintly of antiseptic.

“Has he given you his name, at least?” Thursday asked.

“No,” she said, a little sadly. “But, otherwise,” she added, reverting to her crisp, efficient manner, “he’s doing quite well. I’m sure he’ll come 'round.”

“He’s all right, then?” Thursday asked.

“Oh, yes. He may have some stiffness in his shoulder, later in life—but otherwise, he’ll make a full recovery.”

 

She led him past wards of ten beds each, where patients lay in various stages of recovery; a few of the patients craned their necks hopefully as they passed, as if waiting for a visitor.

 

The ward sister stopped short before a door at the end of the hall; the lad had been given a private room, so that any information gleaned during inquiry would be kept confidential. The last thing they wanted was for the lad’s story to become a source of hospital gossip.

 

As the door opened, the young man looked up—and Thursday was met with the same, unmistakable, large, blue eyes that had so startled him the night before.

Under the white florescent lighting of the hospital, the sharpness of the lad’s cheekbones and chin was thrown into bright relief, and his hair, which had appeared tawny in the darkness, was revealed to be threaded with strands of red and gold.

He watched Thursday approach, the curiosity clear in his face.   

The Inspector nodded in greeting and then eased himself into a metal frame chair next to the bed.

“Inspector Fred Thursday, Oxford City Police,” he said, holding up his warrant card.   

The young man nodded solemnly.

“And you are?” Thursday prompted.

The lad’s eyes widened in alarm at the question, and he shook his head slightly, looking down at his hands, which lay loosely in his lap. Then, slowly, with the thumb of one hand, he began to trace over the place where the IV was taped into the back of the other.

“Don’t worry that, now,” Thursday chided gently. "Just leave it." 

The young man stopped, but he kept his eyes cast down, looking a bit dazed.

 

 Thursday had heard of cases like this, during the war. Shell shock, they called it.  Which would fit. Who knew what the lad had seen? He most likely witnessed the entire attack.

 

So, slowly, then.

 

“Do you _remember_ your name?” Thursday asked, quietly.

There was a flicker of annoyance, then, cast over the lad’s face, and he scowled, as if he’d been insulted.

 

Well, good enough, then. There was some spark there, still, at least. A light that hadn’t been doused.

 

“All right, then," Thursday chuckled. “I meant no offence.”

The lad looked back up at him, the corner of his wide, mobile mouth twitching just a little, as if to mirror his good humor back to him, as if to say his apology was accepted.

 

 "Is there anyone I could call for you?" Thursday asked. 

The lad shook his head, gently. 

 

Thursday sat back in the chair. “Can you tell me anything about what happened? Last night?”

At that, the young man’s eyes began to well a little, and he looked back down at his lap, to avoid answering.  

 

“They can’t find you, you know," Thursday said. "You’re safe here.”

The lad stilled at that. He didn’t look up at Thursday, but the Inspector could tell he was listening.

“You’re under the protection of the Oxford City Police. I don’t take my duties lightly,” Thursday rumbled.

 

The lad looked up, then—sharply, wonderingly. A glimmer of hope sparked in his eyes and faded.

Thursday could see that the lad was considering him, weighing his words. There was a sharp intelligence there, in his eyes, despite his refusal to speak.

When he did find his voice again, Thursday had the feeling that his words would be quick and plentiful, but, for reasons known only to himself, he had decided that, for now, silence was his best option.

 

What was he afraid of?

Well, that the killer might come back for him, obviously.

But there was something else.

It was a face full of intelligence, yes, but also a face utterly bereft of any sense of trust.

 _Was_ it someone he had known, then, the killer?

 

Thursday stood up. The abrupt motion seemed to startle the lad, so Thursday slowed his motions. “Here’s my card. If you want to talk, you can call me at this number any time, day or night, all right then?”

The young man took the card and nodded quietly.

“Or even if you just want to hear _me_ talk, eh?” he asked, with a bit of a chuckle in his voice.

His big blue eyes widened again, as if he feared he was being chastised, but then, his mouth twitched in just the ghost of a smile, as if he understood the jest.

“Mind how you go,” Thursday said.

*****************

 "The trouble of it is," the ward sister said, as she led Thursday back to the lobby, "Is that he's to be released tomorrow morning, and, after that, we don't have many options. Since, from his records, it seems, that he has no family, we’ve nowhere to send him other than to Bellevue.”

 _“Bellevue_?” Thursday asked, incredulously. “Surely Oak Grove Hall would suit better.”

The ward sister shook her head. “We already called. There are no beds available. Bellevue is the only place that can take him.”

 “But surely the lad doesn’t belong there,” Thursday said.  

Thursday had been to Bellevue, several times over the years on various cases. While the staff was trying to modernize, to do better by its patients, the building itself was a Victorian nightmare of bars and cold tile floors, and, as such, tended to be dealt some of the more severe cases; it held a secure ward, as well, for those ruled criminally insane. 

 

“I agree,” the ward sister said. "Oak Grove Hall would be a much better fit. There’s no sign that he’s a danger to anyone.  He’s just . . . “

“Traumatized,” Thursday finished.

 

The ward sister nodded once in agreement.

 

Thursday sighed. He couldn’t imagine the clear-eyed, quiet soul he had just met in the same facility as Northrup and Donohue, two of the most violent offenders he had ever met.

If the lad wasn’t speaking now, after a few weeks in that place, he would be unlikely ever to speak again, in Thursday’s opinion.

 

He was part of it, he knew. But, sometimes, Thursday just hated the system. 

 

And so it would be: another young man lost.

 

And the Cowley CID would lose its best hope of getting any answers with him.  

 ***********

The inquiries at Lonsdale were going nowhere. 

It was difficult, getting a handle on the dynamics of the group. There was little love lost, it was soon made clear, between the seven club members and their fellow students. But while no one seemed to like them much, no one seemed to hate them, either.

Not enough to kill them leastways.  

Thursday and Strange interviewed student after student, and came up with nothing.

One would rather not speak ill of the dead, some said, but they were terrible snobs, they presented a closed front, they walked about as if in some sort of formation, they had a bit of a cruel streak.

They weren't a bad lot, just eccentric, insisted others. 

 

They followed the two murdered dons like star-struck disciples—they were communists, they were fascists, they were devotees of Nietzsche. Reports were all over the map.

 

On only one thing were they in agreement.

 

“Are you sure there were only seven in the group? Are there any other students they were close to?” Thursday asked again and again.

”No, I can’t say as I can think of anyone,” was the answer.

One young don pointed out a photo of the Lonsdale College Moral Science Club on the wall of Professor Durrell's rooms, but the young man with the large eyes was missing; what’s more, he didn’t even seem at all their sort: the seven men in the photograph were beaming with confidence, whereas the lad in the hospital had been unassuming, too stunned by what he had seen even to speak.

 

Who was the eighth student?

 

Or was he a student at all? Now that Thursday had spent the day amongst undergraduates, he began to think that the young man in hospital was a bit older. There was a leanness, an austerity to his face, that led Thursday to think that perhaps he was closer to his mid than early twenties.

Where then had he come from?

Much as he had the lost look of someone from another world, he must have some friends, some family, some acquaintances, somewhere. 

 

Well, someone was bound to be missing him soon. There might even be a missing person report in right now, back at the nick, just waiting for him on his desk.

 

 **************

“Anything in, sergeant?”

“If it’s a missing person report, you mean, then the answer is no," Jakes said, sagely. "But there _are_ boxes and boxes of papers—pages of Ancient Greek and mathematical formulas. I was with a don from Christ Church all day. It’s a nightmare. He claims he’ll be ready with some sort of report by the end of the week, but I’ve got my doubts.”

“ _End of the week_?” Thursday said sharply. 

"You should see it all," Jakes said. "It's hard to know even where to begin." 

 

*********************

Win placed the tea tray smartly on the table and sat down, pulling her chair up to pour.

“Win, love, there’s something I need to talk to you about. About work," Thursday said. 

She smiled bemusedly, lifting the white porcelain tea pot to pour. “What’s this, Fred?  No hat stand?”

 

“A bit of an exception, this,” he said, and the seriousness of his tone prompted her to sit up straighter in her seat. 

 

“What is it, love?” she asked.

 

“We have a case, over at Lonsdale. A mass shooting at some sort of academic club meeting. Seven students killed.”

There was a sudden intake of breath before Win said, “Oh, Fred.”

“The thing of it is, there’s one student who survived. And he’s, well ... he’s not speaking.”

“Well, he’s been through the ringer, hasn’t he, the poor lamb?" Win said. "Has his family been notified?”

“That’s just it. He didn’t have any identification on him; we don’t know who he is. And we’re wary of going looking—we don’t want the killer to know that he survived, that there’s someone out there who might be able to identify him. We just have to wait—wait for someone to miss him and come forward.”

“That’s too bad," Win said, sadly. "It’s a terrible time for him to be so alone.”

"They want to discharge him from hospital tomorrow," Thursday said. "And, as he has no where else to go, he’ll likely be held at Bellevue."

“Might they help him there, if he’s still not speaking?" Win asked. 

Thursday shook his head doubtfully. “Not there. I don't think so."

 

He ran a hand through his graying hair and heaved a heavy breath. "If you could just meet him, Win. There’s just a light about him, a sharpness, but there's a vulnerability about him, too. I hate to think of him in a chaotic place like that. My fear is, if he goes in, his condition will grow worse, and any hopes of ever finding out what he saw, what he knows, might go with him.”

Win smiled. It was a smile of understanding, but of sadness, too. “Sounds like it’s not just the case that’s on your mind. It’s clear you’ve taken a shining to the lad."

Thursday shrugged, and it was as good as an admission. “Yeah, well, maybe I have at that.”

She set her cup down.

“Then bring him home, love,” she said, placing a small, strong hand over one of his large, rough ones. "We’ll soon have him sorted out.”

He laid his other hand on top of hers, and squeezed it gently in gratitude.

“He’s a good lad, Win. You’ll see. And it won’t be long before someone steps forward to claim him.”

 

********* 

It was half ten when the phone began to ring.

"Thursday," Thursday intoned picking up the receiver. 

For a moment, Thursday thought it was a prank, as no one answered; there was only steady breathing on the line. He found himself stilling his own breathing so that he could better hear--and then, there it was: a muffled background noise of quiet beeps and a group of women talking. 

It sounded like the phone at a nurse’s station.

“Lad, is that you?”

There was nothing but silence, but Thursday couldn't shake the feeling of a presence there, the feeling he was being listened to.

“Good night, lad. I’ll see you in the morning.”

The breathing took on a slower, measured cadence then, and Thursday could hear it, almost, in the sound: the words “all right." And then the receiver was slowly put back into place, leaving behind a gentle click and an expanse of an even deeper silence.

 


	2. Chapter 2

  

Filling out the paperwork that was required by the witness protection program proved to be easy.

Thursday had the perfect background—having already passed through multiple checks as a copper—and he had the perfect cover.

 

Win’s older sister had three stepping-stair, fair-haired sons that were just around the lad’s age. And, as Win’s sister had married a solicitor and had a larger house further out in the country, they often went to theirs for holidays. Renee’s boys had not been round for five years. It would be easy to tell the neighbors the lad was one of their nephews, if they happened to notice him come and go.

 

But, maybe, he thought, as he prepared to sign the bottom of the final form, it was a little too perfect. A little too easy.

 

For, after all, what was he doing?

 

Although it was foolish to worry. The only men who knew of the lad’s connection to the “Lonsdale Massacre,” as the papers were beginning to call it, were Mr. Bright, Dr. DeBryn, Strange, Jakes and the two medics, Dave Harrison and Basil Clemm, all men he had known and worked with for years.  Men whom he had depended on. Men with whom he had worked alongside in the trenches, on terrible blood-stained nights just like the one two nights previously.

 

It was only . . . well . . . six people.

But he trusted them with his life.

The only difference was: now he might be trusting them with his family’s lives as well.

 

Thursday clicked the pen shut and looked at the paper—a sick, sinking feeling crashing into his gut like a stone.

 

Because then, too, there were the surgeons and the nurses—and although they had been given an alternative story to be getting on with, it would hardly take a genius for someone to put two and two together and come up with four. A young man, looking to be college age, brought in with a gunshot wound the same night as a tragic mass shooting at Lonsdale?

But they had taken an oath, of sorts, hadn’t they? Some vow regarding patient confidentiality?

 

So, maybe ten people. Eleven at the most.

 

Oh, hell.

 

He clicked the pen open. His hand hovered over the form for just a moment.

And then he signed his name.

 

Well, what’s done is done.

And after all, what was the alternative? How could he sleep at night, thinking of the lad sitting in some cell, the shadows of bars cast across his face, listening to the cursing and screaming of men like Donahue, echoing down the cold tiled corridors?

********

 

They had told the children the night before, right after tea. Joan took the news with good grace; but he never thought for a moment she would do otherwise. A real hand at dealing with people was their Joan.  

Sam, though, had been a disappointment. “He doesn’t talk? So, what? He’s got a few bats in the belfry, then?” he asked.

His reprimand was right on the tip of his tongue, but Win beat him to the punch, coming down on the boy like a ton of bricks.

 “Sam Thursday,” she said. “I thought I raised you to be kinder than that. What sort of thing is that to say? And you’re certainly not to say any such thing around that poor boy, or you’ll have me to answer to. Is that clear?”

 

Sam, though taller now than his mother, seemed to shrink a little, his good natured, round face looking thoroughly chastised.

“All right, all right, mum, I’m sorry,” he said, all in a rush.

Win wiped her hands on a tea towel as if cleaning her hands of him and stalked back into the kitchen.

Sam raised his eyebrows at her retreat and murmured something under his breath, something that sounded like, “I hope this bloke has a thicker skin than that if he’s to survive in _this_ house.”

********

Thursday showed up at the hospital early, forms in hand, with a paper bag filled with some of Sam’s old clothes.

“Are you here for our shadow, then?” a young blonde nurse asked, with a tinkle of a laugh in her voice.

“Shadow?” Thursday asked.

“The young man in room eight. He about drove us all on the night shift mad last night, he did. Every hour or so, he came wandering down to the nurse’s station, pulling his IV along with him, quiet as a shadow. We kept trying to ask him if there was anything he was wanting, but each time he would just shake his head and trail off back to his room, without a word. Couldn’t make heads nor tails of it.”

 

She pushed the door to room eight open with a vigorous swish.

 

The lad lay in the single bed, eyes closed, dead asleep, pale, with just a trace of a frown on his face. His right hand was angled up, so that it was resting on the pillow by his head, his fingers curled loosely around the card that Thursday had given him the morning before, one of the few he had handed out during his career with his home telephone number written on the back.

 

Perhaps he had been working up the courage to call him again?

Or perhaps he was fully ready to talk, but was worried about the lateness of the hour?

 

The nurse flipped on the florescent light with a crisp flip of a switch.

“Morning, sunshine,” she said.

The young man startled and blinked. Then, as his eyes adjusted, his gaze swerved blearily from one of them to the other, as if trying to take everything in.

“Knackered, eh?” the nurse asked knowingly. “That’s what comes of roaming around half the night. C’mon then. Today’s your day to go home.”

The confusion on the lad’s face deepened, mingled with the slightest trace of alarm. Wherever it was he was thinking of as “home,” he did not seem all that eager to return to it.

 

“I thought you might come stay at ours,” Thursday said.

The lad turned his head from the nurse to him, but his perplexed expression did not soften.

 “I’ve two kids just your age, or nearabouts, I thought it might be for the best while we. . . . while we get you sorted,” Thursday explained. 

 

“Well, isn’t that nice, then?” the nurse said, absentmindedly, checking the levels on his IV.

 

Thursday could see it clearly on the lad’s face: he wasn’t completely opposed to the idea, but there was a distinct flicker of pride there; he didn’t want to be a burden.

 

“I’m sure you’ll be no bother,” Thursday said. “You aren’t exactly the most boisterous person I’ve ever met.”

 

And then it was back: the good-humored, lopsided attempt at a smile, a small glimmer of gratitude.

And then it faded, as the nurse covered the IV needle on the back of his hand with a wad of cotton, readying to remove it from the vein. He twisted his head away from her, and his face suddenly went blank, as he stared at some fixed point on the wall.

“Squeamish, are we?” the nurse said. “It’s not so bad.” The lad seemed prepared to take her word for it and chanced a glance, but then he swung his head away again, as a small blot of blood darkened the pad.

 

It rather put one more dampener on Jakes’ theory that it might have been the lad who had gunned down nine people two nights before. The delicate shade of green he turned at the sight of blood seemed something rather hard to feign.

 

The nurse plastered a fresh gauze over his hand and taped it.

 

“OK, you can look now,” she said, amused. “It’s done. Just be sure to keep your left arm fairly still for the next two weeks. No climbing trees, all right?”

 

The lad looked bewildered at the nurse’s joke, and he turned Thursday, with a comical frown that seemed to say, “Why the hell would I be climbing trees?”

Thursday couldn’t help but chuckle, and it occurred to him that the wake of the warm exchange would be the perfect opportunity for him to swoop in and seal the deal.  

 “I brought some of my son’s extra clothes. They might not be a perfect fit, but you’ll look a damn sight less odd walking out of here in them than in that get up,” Thursday said.  

 

The young man looked down at his hospital gown and lifted a bit of it near the collar with two fingers, as if to examine it, as if he hadn’t known what he was wearing, and grimaced in agreement. Then he took the paper bag offered and smiled his thanks.

Too late now, then. He knew it would be a point of honor with the lad. Once he was in Sam’s clothes, Thursday was sure he would not back out. Otherwise, he’d fret that he had taken the things, rather than having just borrowed them for a while.

“I leave you to get sorted, then,” Thursday said.

“Do you think you can manage?” the nurse asked. “We don’t want you jerking that arm about, now.”

The lad suddenly looked as haughty as a tsar, as if deeply offended by the idea that he was unable to dress himself.

The nurse giggled, utterly nonplussed. “All right then, sunshine,” she said, even though at the moment he looked anything but. “Just mind you don’t pull on those stiches.”

And then she sailed out the door, and Thursday followed in her wake.

*****

Thursday was waiting outside in the hall, when a doctor holding a clipboard approached him with the echoing clap of a decisive step and a flash of white coat.  

“I’m just here to sign the discharge papers,” he said. “Are you here for our John Doe, then?”  he asked.

“Yes,” Thursday intoned, in such a manner as to discourage all further inquiries.

The doctor raised his hand.  “I’ll ask no more. I only wanted to tell you that the surgery nurse noticed something a bit odd, when she was searching for a vein for the IV. His right hand. It appears to have been broken at some point in time, rather badly. It seems as if it had never been tended to. It’s healed rather oddly. He’s a bit clumsy with it, you may notice.”

“Oh?” Thursday asked.  

“It’s rare to see such a bad, complex break. Or one that’s been left unset, at any rate. It’s almost as if it was . . . ,” the doctor hesitated, searching for a delicate way to put it.

 

“Deliberate?” Thursday supplied. 

 

The doctor nodded grimly. “He seems fine now, just a bit uncoordinated, as I said before. And anyway, he seems to be a lefty.”

 “How do you know that?” Thursday asked, sharply. “Has he written anything at all?”

“No, he just favors it while he’s eating. That’s the arm he’s supposed to be keeping still. The nurses had to remind him.”

 

Thursday wasn’t sure what to make of that, but he filed it away with everything else. Trying to learn about the lad was like reading a book backwards—you found out the endings of things first and had to work your way back to find the beginnings.

 

The doctor clammed up as the lad emerged from the room.

 

Well, he looked ridiculous. He was one of those lads who are like colts, all arms and legs—he was quite taller and lankier than his Sam. The shirt was cut a bit too broad through the chest and shoulders, but the sleeves rode two inches too high on his wrists.  

The lad seemed to know it, too, and he shrugged apologetically.

“You’ll do, lad,” Thursday said. “At least till we can get you fitted up with something better.”

And it was certainly better than taking him out of here bare-arsed, in that white and green print hospital gown. It would get them out the door at least.

He’d make it a point to stop by on his way home from the station that night and pick him up a few things of his own.

 

*******

Once they were in the car, away from all the doctors and nurses and official-looking people, Thursday thought that the young man might begin to speak.

But instead, he looked out the window, watching the world pass with a look of wonderment on his face, as if he had never seen it before.

It _was_ a beautiful city. Thursday had become accustomed to its graceful and sublte antiquity, but seeing it through the lad’s eyes reminded him of those first weeks they were here, after moving from their gritty little lane back in the Smoke.

“The city of dreaming spires,” Thursday said. “My wife and I thought we’d come to paradise once we moved here.”

The lad turned from the window and looked at him, the question clear on his face.

“We were two up, two back in the Smoke.  When we came here, seeing all this green,” Thursday shook his head slightly as if words could not convey the feeling. “The kids went about went mad, running about.”

The young man remained silent, but nodded thoughtfully, as if he understood, and turned back to watching the world pass by out the window.

 

Ah, well. Early days yet.

 

********

The lad hesitated, just for a moment, in the doorway of the dining room, stunned, it seemed, by the overzealous greeting.

“Hello, then,” Joan chirped brightly.

“You got here just in time,” Sam called. “Joan was just getting ready to take the last of the eggs.”

Joan kicked him lightly under the table. “I certainly was not about to do any such thing.”

Win, with an apron over her jumper and tweed skirt, bustled into the room from the kitchen, with a fresh batch of eggs. “None of that. I’ve plenty for everyone.”

 

Win looked up at the lad and smiled as she was spooning the eggs onto the platter. It was done quite deftly; it was a smile warm enough to be welcoming, but brief enough so as to not leave the lad with the feeling he was being placed under a microscope.

 

“Good morning, love,” she said. She gestured toward an empty chair with a deft wave of the pan. “Now, tuck in.”

 

The young man sat down cautiously, watching Joan and Sam almost as if they were creatures from another world.

“Sorry we didn’t wait,” Joan said. “Sam and I have got to get the bus, for work. We already missed one, actually.”

The lad shrugged shyly, as if to say that it was all right; he hadn’t expected them to wait for him.

“You’ll be staying with us for a while, then?” Joan asked.  

He looked uncertain, and his eyes trailed to Thursday.

“That’s right,” Thursday said.

 

“Hope you like music,” Sam said, between mouthfuls of toast. “Joan’s got her record player going all hours.”

The lad seemed to brighten at the mention of music—Sam, his head bent over his plate, eating with a speed and alacrity that only boys of that age can, didn’t catch it—but Thursday could see by her face that Win did.

 

 

“Do you like music, then, love?” Win asked, coaxingly.

It took the lad a second to realize he was the one being addressed, but then he nodded fervently. It was the most definite opinion he had seemed thus far to have expressed about anything.

 

“Maybe you won’t mind, then. As for myself, I can’t say I’m fond of waking up with John Lennon shouting at me through the walls,” Sam said.

 

The lad looked around, as if wondering where this John Lennon might be.

 

“That’s too bad, Sam. Looks like it will be two to one from here out,” Joan replied. She turned to the lad. “You like the Beatles?” she asked.  

 

His smile faded into a look of uncertainty.

 

“You know? The Beatles?” Sam said, before breaking out into a helpful but off-key chorus of “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

 

But the young man only looked at him blankly.

 

“You never heard of the _Beatles_?” Sam asked.

 

The lad’s smile backed even further into retreat, and he shook his head, already seeming to know that that was the wrong answer.  

 

“What are you, from outer space?” Sam asked.

 

God damn the boy.

 

“Oy!” Thursday said. “What did your mother tell you? Why don’t you make yourself useful and bring your old man the paper, eh? I want to check the headlines, before I go in.”

But perhaps the reprimand wasn’t needed. For the lad seemed to be amused by what Sam had said—he let loose a sort of breathless laugh. He didn’t mind being teased, then, and Thursday supposed that anyone could see teasing was soup d’jour at any meal shared with Joan and Sam. He seemed happy enough to play along, grateful to be included.

Sam shoveled one last forkful of eggs into his mouth as he pushed back his chair. “Ok, Dad,” he said, getting up and heading out to the door to get the paper.

 

“Not the Beatles, eh? Do you like classical, then?” Win asked, pouring herself for a cup of tea.  

The lad nodded.

 

Oh. Well. That made sense. A college boy would go in for that highbrow sort of stuff.

 

After he’d gotten the lad some better fitting clothes, maybe he’d pick up a record or two as well. Those records were bound to be cheaper than the pop albums Joan so favored, the ones he picked up now and then for her from Woolworth’s.

 

Sam came back through the hall and tossed the paper down on the table in front of him. Thursday snatched it up. He wanted to see what the press had to say, but there was no need for the lad to see the blazing headline: Oxford City Police Seek Lonsdale Killer.

 

Sam rose forward in his seat and grabbed at the sports page, spreading it out before him and the lad.

The lad crossed his arms, resting them on the table, and leaned forward to look at the paper.

Then, in one second, it seemed as if all the blood had drained from his face.

“Are you all right? Not taking a funny turn, are you?” Thursday asked sharply.

 

Maybe it was all too much too soon. The kids were awfully loud.

 

The lad shook his head, then, faintly, but he kept his eyes lowered, locked on the newspaper. He looked vaguely ill, as if he might topple over, as if the wind had been knocked clear out of him.

 

“I can’t believe France beat Italy either,” Sam said. “What were the odds?”

 

The young man nodded slightly in agreement, but Thursday would have bet half of what he owned that the lad had not heard a word that Sam said, that he was lost in his own thoughts.

What on the sports page could have caused such a reaction?

 

It all truly was like reading a book backwards, or like trying to decipher one of those codes that came in the puzzle section of the newspaper, where one letter stood for another and you had to figure out the rest from there.

 

 

Thursday folded the paper and glanced at the sunburst clock on the wall. It was later than he thought. He stood and brushed his hands over his jacket, smoothing the fabric. “Well,” he said. “I best be getting in.”  

Sam and Joan stood up as well, Sam taking one last sip of tea. “We’re off, too,” Joan said. “We’ll be late getting the next bus.” And then they rushed in a flurry of youthful energy out the door.

 

Win stood, too, and straightened his lapels.

“Let’s have a look at you, then,” she said.

She looked him over and pronounced, “You’ll, do, Fred. Come home safe.”

Then she handed him a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

“Tuesday?” he said, tucking it into his coat. “Wonder what’s on for today?”

She smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek.

 

He hesitated at the door, but then everything seemed fine.  

The lad was at the table, still chewing absentmindedly on a piece of toast. He had eaten everything placed before him, in fact, leaving Win in her glory. She’d have a chick to tend for a little while at least.

And Joan and Sam, with a new project, had bickered less than they typically did of a morning, turning their attention on the lad, instead.

 

His first thought that morning was right after all: It was easy.

Sitting at the table with him there—it was as if he had always had a place among them.

****

Thursday was just checking in at the nick when the telephone rang. 

“Detective Inspector Thursday, Oxford City Police,” he said.

“Sir,” Jakes said. “Strange and I are at Professor Durrell’s house.  There’s something here you need to see.”

********

Constable Strange stood outside the front door, his arms folded across his chest. He nodded solemnly to Thursday as he passed— not at all the jovial man’s usual greeting.

Thursday nodded back. “Constable.”

And then Jakes was there, in the foyer, running a nervous hand through his carefully slicked-back hair. “Sir,” he said. “You’ve got to see this.” He jerked his head, indicating for him to follow.

 

Jakes lead him down a flight of narrow wooden stairs to the basement.

Once there, Thursday wasn’t quite sure what Jakes was on about; it looked like a fairly typical basement—whitewashed walls, bare light bulbs in the ceiling, cardboard boxes stacked in a corner, planks of spare lumber leaning against the wall, obscuring any light from the small, high windows.

Then Jakes walked over to the opposite wall and fit his hand into a small crack in the edge.

And then he slid a quarter of the damn wall open, guiding it so that it slid away into a hidden wall pocket.  

What was this, then?

Thursday followed Jakes through the opening of the wall.

Christ.

It was a machine, filling the entirety of the opposite wall, black, with lights and wires and keyboards and . . . 

Thursday approached it cautiously. It was an immense thing, with rotors lined along the top.  Attached at the base were three series of typewriter keyboards, each key wired into the backing. 

 

What the hell?  It was like . . .

 

“It’s like one enormous enigma machine,” Thursday said.

“You mean, what, like that coding device that the Nazis used? The thing that those blokes at Bletchley Park cracked?” Jakes asked.

“Yeah,” Thursday breathed. He hesitated to touch it—not because he was intimidated by it, nor out of fear of breaking it, but because he didn’t want to leave any fingerprints on it.

 

He wasn’t quite sure what he planned to do about it yet.

 

At the top, were a series of rotors, with letters printed around the edges, ready to be set and changed. Fifteen rotors, capable of producing an incredible number of patterns.  

There were three pegboards, too. The base of each plug inscribed with a letter, and rows of outlets along the top, inscribed with letters as well. There was a fourth pegboard, at the bottom, inscribed with Greek letters, and then, some sort of dialing system, the likes of which Thursday had never seen.

 

Did they need to call in someone? Special Branch?

 

Or was this just the crackpot invention of an eccentric don, some pet hobby?

 

That was most likely it. This wasn’t his concern. His concern was to find the killer who had taken nine lives on his ground.

 

But then, why the secrecy of the hidden wall?

Why have one machine if there wasn’t another one . . . somewhere else?  

 

He knew what he ought to do is to tell Mr. Bright of this. Better safe than sorry. If it _was_ something authentic, something operable, it would be hard put to argue that the murders and this . . . enigma machine to the tenth power . . . weren’t somehow connected.

But what sort of spotlight would that put the lad under?

Thursday stepped back, taking in a broader view of the machine, as if it might give him not only a larger perspective on the machine, but on the case as well.

 

“You’re safe here,” he had told the lad. “They can’t find you, you know.”

“I don’t take my responsibilities lightly.”

 

And he made his decision.

 

Truth was, he didn’t know if he trusted those big nobs from Special Branch. What he really wanted to do was to keep this to themselves—just long enough, at least, to give him the chance to discern exactly what was what.

“Well, that’s it, then,” he said.  “We’re keeping this on the quiet until we know what we’re dealing with. I don’t much fancy some big wheels from Special Branch or the Golf, Cheese and Chess Society swooping in here and seizing our evidence. Trust no bugger.”

Jakes raised his brows in question. 

“Until I say otherwise, we never saw this. Understood, Sergeant?” Thursday said.

He nodded doubtfully.

“Any thing comes down on us, I’ll take full responsibility,” Thursday said.

Jakes took a drag on his cigarette, looking slightly more heartened at that.

“Sir,” he said.

Then, in one flick, he cast his cigarette down and mashed it out with his foot.

“Don’t leave that cigarette butt in here,” Thursday barked. “We weren’t here, remember? Christ, Jakes, what were you thinking?”  

"Sorry,” he said. “It’s just. It’s just all got me rattled, that’s all.”  

 

What? The coding device? It was odd, yes, but it certainly wasn’t anything he would think his sardonic sergeant would be so unnerved about.

 

Jakes must have read the look on Thursday’s face, because he took a shuddering breath and said, “This isn’t all of it. There’s something else you need to see.”

 

He picked the cigarette butt up and dispersed the ash with his foot. “This way, sir.”

 

Jakes led him back upstairs to the ground floor and then through the house to the foyer; then he turned sharply and headed up a long flight of carpeted stairs, up to the second floor.

Against the wall of the wide hallway stood a large bookcase, crammed from end to end with old, worn, cloth-bound books, some of which had toppled onto the floor. Jakes went to the side of it, just as he had with the basement wall downstairs, and pushed the bookcase aside.

Behind the thick case, was a small door fitted with a series of latches.

What was here, then? The second enigma machine? Could it fit in whatever space was behind this small door?

 

The latches has been left undone. Perhaps Durrell had been in a hurry that night and had neglected them?

 

Thursday opened the door to reveal an opening so small that he had to stoop as he half-crawled inside. 

 

Jakes did not follow.

 

Once inside, Thursday found himself in the middle of a secret, hidden room, about six by ten feet, absolutely bare of all furnishings save for a thin down mattress in one corner—one of that old-fashioned kind, without any metal springs. 

Thursday straighted and slowly turned, taking in the madness that covered the plain white walls; every available inch of space had been written on—there were formulas and numbers and a riot of Greek letters, all in a slanted backwards hand.

He reached forward, tentatively and pressed his hand against the wall, which gave slightly under his touch. Behind the white board surface, it seemed as if the walls were lined, as if with soundproofing foam.

He pulled the mattress away from the wall. Hidden behind it, just above the baseboard, was a series of hatch marks, as if someone had been here, counting the days.  There were hundreds, even thousands.

Christ.

A person couldn’t help but go mad, locked in a place like this.

He looked at the hatch marks that seemed to go on and on and . . .

 

A person couldn’t help but go mad.

 

He ran two stop signs in his haste to get home.  

He had let himself go soft. He had forgotten, in Oxford, what he had learned in the Smoke, forgotten what he had just told Jakes: Trust no bugger.

 

And now he had left his wife home alone with God only knew who.

 *****

He burst through the front door with a bang and was met with a loud droning noise that set his heart racing faster.

“Win?”

There was no answer.

“Win?” he called again, striding down the hall.

She was there, in the den, hoovering the carpet, seeming to hum to herself as she worked. When she saw him, she looked worried, and switched off the machine. 

“What? Home in the middle of the day? Is everything all right, love?”

 “Where is he?” Fred said.

There could be no doubt as to whom he meant.

“Why, he’s in the garden,” she said, looking confused.   

Thursday immediately tore towards the back door, with Win, misunderstanding his show of concern, following in his wake, offering explanations.

 

“He got bored when I was doing the hoovering, I suppose, because as soon as I turned round, I found that he had gone outside. . . “

 

Outside, of course, he had gone outside. Most likely because hadn’t been outside for months. Possibly years.

 

“And I saw he was weeding the beds,” Win was saying. “I thought he couldn’t do much harm as long as he was using only his good arm.”

At the sliding glass patio door, Thursday ground to a halt. The lad was there, kneeling quietly in the grass, one hand resting in his lap, the other working at pulling some weeds out from amongst Win’s colorful riot of marigolds and wildflowers. A neat pile of greenery lay at his side, and the summer breeze ruffled his hair as he worked.

 

With his face cast down, watchful of disturbing tender roots, he looked utterly tranquil and utterly content.

And utterly sane.

 

Thursday’s wildly pumping heart gradually began to slow.

 

“I’ll need to have a word with him,” he said. “It’s about the case.”

“A _word_?” Win asked, with a laugh in her voice.

But the adrenaline was still coursing too strongly through him to leave room for laughter.

Win frowned, then, turning serious. “All right, love,” she said. “Call me if you need anything.”

 

At the sound of the glass door sliding open, the lad looked up, his wide blue eyes betraying one quick glimmer of alarm before they settled, turning peaceful as the day’s June sky, the greeting in them as clear as a call.

 

Wonder how much longer that’ll last, Thursday thought ruefully.

 

Thursday walked over to the flower beds, and, since he didn’t want to loom over the lad, he dropped to his knees as well, as if to scrutinize his work.

“You’ve got this looking nice, you do. Win’s been after me to help her with this of a Saturday ever since May,” he said.

The lad looked over and smiled, as if pleased by the praise. It was clear—now that he was sitting this close to him— that he had not been much out in the sun. In just the few hours since he saw him last, a splash of freckles had popped out over the bridge of his nose.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it? June’s about as nice as it gets in England, I always think,” Thursday said.  

The lad began to still a bit, to work more slowly, looking uncertain.

And, well, he wasn’t wrong, was he?

 

People usually did speak about the weather, when they wanted to talk about something else.

 

Thursday said it quietly, as gently as he knew how.

“I just came Professor Durrell’s house,” he said.

The lad’s face began to fall, as if he suspected, as if he was stealing himself for what he knew might be coming next.

“We found the room,” Thursday said. “It was your room, wasn’t it?”

 

He took his hand out of the earth then, and pulled it into his lap, joining it with the other. He was still for a moment, and, then, he sighed as if to say, “Well, it had to be that.”

 

Thursday remembered then, that odd set of latches on the door. Perhaps it was because he was sitting right next to the lad, their views of the world differing from the perspective of only two feet, that suddenly, he could see it all, see it all as clear as if he had been there.

“Durrell must have known there was some danger that night,” Thursday said, and as he said the words, he knew they must be true. “Something that had him preoccupied, nervous even. Flustered.  And he left the locks. And you thought you’d take your chance.”

The lad said nothing, just stared disconsolately down at the ground.

And then, he slowly nodded.

 

So, the lad had never given up, then. No matter what happened, some vestige of independence had remained, indomitable.

 

Then, Thursday saw it: a flash of memory from just that morning, of that stricken look on the lad’s face as he had seen the newspaper. It had nothing to do with France’s score.

 

It was the date. 4 June 1965.

 

“How long?” he asked.  

 

The lad lowered his head further at the question and closed his eyes. His breathing turned shallow, his face as still as a mask. He sat so long, Thursday thought he might never move again.

But then, unbidden, two thick tears spilled out from under his veiled russet lashes. He turned away and wiped his face fiercely with the back of his sleeve, shaking his head impatiently as if to say “What does it matter now?”

   
No use crying over spilled milk.

No use crying over a few lost years of my life.

How many? Two? Three?

 

And he had never heard of the Beatles.

 

Thursday felt almost ill with the thought of it.

 

 And he knew he should be asking about that night. The copper in him knew when someone was ready to talk, knew that he should be taking advantage of that chink in the armor to slowly bring the lad around to the case.

But right now, Thursday couldn’t care less about the identity of the gunman. Because the father in him knew not to push when a child wasn’t ready. When to sit back and follow his lead.  

 

Thursday reached to put a tentative hand on the lad’s back, moving his thumb in soothing circles. He thought the lad might flinch, jerk further away, but instead, he did just the opposite: in one quick movement, he turned back around toward him, burying his face in his shoulder, shaking with silent sobs.

Thursday sat stunned for a moment. And then he pulled him in closer.

No, right now, he did not give a damn about the case.

And why should he?

Because the lad was more than a witness. He was a victim, too. Perhaps the greatest victim in the whole affair, even though he had survived.

And it had all happened on Thursday’s ground. Under his watch. Even as he was lighting a pipe, or having a pint down at the pub, or filing reports or sitting around the table with his family or even simply opening a window, the lad had been there, locked in that small prison, waiting for a rescue that had never come.

 

Thursday knelt there with him, for a long while, it seemed, until his knees felt cool with the damp of the mud and grass, and his shoulder warm with the lad’s tears and shuddering breaths.

It was fine. There was no place else that Thursday needed to be just then.

He had the time.

They still had time. Perhaps, that long-awaited rescue could still come.

 The lad had gotten himself out of that cell on his own, but it was clear, in the depths of his silence, that part of him was still locked away.

 

Finally, the young man quieted and he pulled back. He wiped his face again and smiled a bit ruefully, and, then to Thursday’s surprise, gave an odd sort of breathless laugh.

But Thursday found that he understood—it was a bit out of embarrassment over his outburst, it was clear, but it was also something more complicated: as if at the same time he was mourning the time he had lost, he was also reveling in his new-found freedom, and in the clash of the two emotions— joy and sorrow—the lad didn’t quite know what to do with himself.

Thursday kept one solid hand on his shoulder, as if to ground him.

“It’s not too late, you know,” Thursday said. “You’re free, you can get your life back.”

The lad pulled back and looked up at him, searchingly, and Thursday could read the question, clear. “How will I do that?”

“I’ll help you, if you’d let me,” Thursday said.

And it was back to square one—there it was, that look of uncertainty, of doubt.

“It’s my job, it’s what coppers do,” Thursday said, simply. “We can piece it all back together, you know. It just takes two words to begin.”

A faint crease settled between his brows.

“Your name,” Thursday clarified. “You could start with that. Besides,” he added, “It would be nice to have something to call you.”

The lad’s reddened eyes wavered; he was considering it, Thursday was certain of it.

“If you don’t want to say it, you can write it down,” he offered.  

The young man took another deep, steadying breath. And, then, slowly nodded yes.

Thursday handed him a pen and a notebook from the inner pocket of his jacket and the lad took it, leaning it against his leg for leverage. He crooked his arm around to left, in that awkward way lefties have, and wrote in a backwards slanting print, one word.

 _Morse_.

“Morse?” Thursday asked.

Morse nodded.

“Something Morse? Or Morse Something?”

The lad scowled and shook his head firmly.

“Just Morse?”

He nodded.

Thursday took the notebook back and tucked it inside his pocket.

He had hoped for at least two words to go on, but one would have to do.

And how apropos.

Even the one word he _did_ have was just like a code.

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

The name Morse might not be the most common surname, Thursday soon discovered, but it wasn’t the most uncommon one, either.

 

Thursday stood waiting before a wide maple desk while the bursar went through folders in a filing cabinet, searching through the records of the maths department. Every now and then, he pulled out a heavy cardstock file and read a name aloud.

“There was an Edward Morse here in the early ‘50s,” he said. “And I’ve a James Morse as well. No, this file is even older. Date of birth—fifth of March 1927.”

“The Morse I’m looking for might have been born any time between ‘35 and ‘45 if I’d have to hazard a guess,” Thursday said.

Suddenly, the bursar’s shining red face brightened. “Are you sure Morse is the _surname_ of the person you’re seeking? We had a Morse Fox-Hudgens-Browne back in the late ‘50s, it was, I think.”

 

Thursday mulled it over; the lad hadn’t made it clear either way, whether Morse was his surname or his Christian name.

“That might fit,” Thursday said.

 

“There’s a photograph of him in the main hallway; he won the Alistair Prize for his year.  I can show you, if you’d like. Just this way.”

Thursday had no idea what the Alistair Prize was, but judging from the complexity of the formulas that he had seen written on the white walls of the tiny, secret room, the lad must be half-genius. Perhaps the bursar had stumbled upon the right one.

 

The man led Thursday down a long hall with gleaming wood floors, splashed with bright squares of light thrown by windows that were full of the clean, June sun. His pace slowed as they came to a series of gilt-framed photographs, and he began to scan the wall, as if searching for the right one. Finally, he stopped and gestured to a picture with a small metal plaque that read, “Morse Fox-Hudgens-Browne  - 1959” in small block letters.

It took only a moment for Thursday to realize the man in the photograph was not his Morse—the man had short, dark hair, dark eyes, and a haughty expression—his face screwed up as if someone had put an onion under his nose.

 

A don in billowing black robes and with wild white hair paused as he was passing from the other direction. “Ah,” he said, stopping to follow their gaze. “Morse Fox-Hudgens-Browne. One of our brightest students. His father owns British Imperial, you know.”

 

Even if his looks weren’t so frightfully off, this piece of information would have been enough to seal the nail on the coffin, in Thursday’s opinion. The disappearance of the son of a wealthy and powerful family would have generated an outcry, surely—not passed unnoticed for months, or possibly, years.  

 

“No,” Thursday said. “This isn’t him. It’s the right era thereabouts, but the Morse I’m looking for has lighter hair, a bit wavy.”

The don blinked. “That sounds like it could be Morse,” he said.

Thursday raised an eyebrow.

It wasn’t exactly the most helpful of tips.

“Morse who?” Thursday asked.

 

The don appeared to give the matter some thought. “Do you know? I simply don’t know. He just went by Morse.”

 

“ _Something Morse? Or Morse Something?” Thursday asked._

_The lad scowled and shook his head firmly._

_“Just Morse?”_

_He nodded._

 

That just might be it.

“It was a little confusing,” the don conceded, “but of course, Morse Hudgens-Fox-Browne went by Browne.  And Morse wasn’t in mathematics. He was reading Greats.”

“Greats?” Thursday asked, with interest, remembering the Greek words on the wall, the Greek letters on the coding device.

“Yes. The only reason I remember him at all is because of Clive Durrell. You know,”—and here the elderly don grimaced, as if he thought it rather tasteless to bring up such a topic—“the man who was killed a few days back.”

“Why is that?” Thursday asked. “What did this Morse have to do with Durrell?”

The don huffed a rueful laugh.

“Well, because Durrell was obsessed with him.”

“And why was that?” Thursday asked, trying to keep his face utterly impassive, utterly unreadable.

“Durrell thought he was brilliant. He was always after him to change his course of study. And Morse was quite musical, too, if I recall—and that fit with one of Durrell’s pet theories, that musical people excel in mathematics. He was quite a bore about it really, always going on at high table about what a what a waste it was, a fine mind like that gone to dead languages. Durrell was like that, though. A bit heavy handed. I used to tell him, ‘you can drag a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink, for God’s sakes.’”

 

Thursday’s face darkened.

Perhaps that was just what happened?

A star pupil doesn’t want to study under you. So, what, exactly . . .

You kidnap him?

 

It sounded mad.

 

The don grimaced again. “I say, I would hope this has nothing to do with this week’s unfortunate event. I can’t think that the Morse I’m thinking of would have ought to do with that. He got sent down years ago. Went off and joined the Army, I believe. Or the Foreign Legion.”

 

And, suddenly, Thursday felt as if the hands on the clock—the clock keeping tabs on how much time he had available to get to the bottom of this before he’d have to inform Mr. Bright— were pushed five hours forwards.

 

Why did the lad have to be so stubborn? Why couldn’t he simply have given him his full name? Then, Thursday could have come down here, quietly asked the bursar for the records, read what he needed to know, and have been gone in the course of ten minutes, without attracting the faintest hint of curiosity. Because this almost certainly had to be his Morse the don was speaking of, didn't it? 

 

“No,” Thursday agreed. “This has to do with another matter.”

“Ah,” the don said, not entirely convinced.

 

And why should he be?

 

This was what Thursday had feared when he had come over to Lonsdale to have a poke around—that someone might link his inquiry to the murders. It was frustrating beyond belief—with just one more word from the lad, this could have all been avoided.

 

 “Well, if you’d like to know more, I’d suggest you talk with Felix Lorimer. He was Morse’s tutor. He should be in his rooms now, I believe,” the don said.

Thursday nodded and then turned to the bursar. “Thank you for your time,” he said.

 

*************

“Ah, yes, I remember him well,” Felix Lorimer said. “I can remember the first time I saw him, in fact. It was right through that very window.”

He gestured to a window that looked out onto the green, the bottom pane of which was framed in a kaleidoscope of gillyflowers. Then he stilled for a moment, as if lost in thought, as if he really _was_ imagining that the Morse he spoke of was right there, standing outside the glass.

“Yes, he was walking along, and he stopped to look in through the window. Nervous. Shy. Hopeful. He was a scholarship boy, you know. Father was a cab driver, I believe. Lincolnshire,” Lorimer said.

“Have you seen him recently?” Thursday asked.

“Alas, no,” Lorimer said, a bit overdramatically, in Thursday’s opinion.  “A first was his for the asking, but he got sent down. I think it was right at the end of Michaelmas Term. In ‘59. It was a pity. He’d be a fellow by now, if he had stayed the course.”

“What happened? How was it he was sent down?” Thursday asked.

“A broken heart, if you can believe it. I can still recall his exact words, the first time he saw her. He came into tutorial and sat down, right there, right in that chair, and said, ‘I’ve just seen an angel crossing Carfax.’”

 

Thursday couldn’t quite repress his smile. Even though he hadn’t heard the lad speak a word, when he remembered the wondering look on his face as he gazed out of the car window, he found he could easily imagine him saying just such a thing.

 

“Within a few months, they were engaged,” Lorimer said. “And by the end of the year, she was back with her previous fiancé. He would still come to tutorial, but it was as if he was stumbling about in a fog. That last term, he was a thing altogether pitiable.”

 

Thursday frowned. The man seemed to enjoy relating this Morse’s downfall a little too much.

 

“Ran off and joined the army, last I heard. I’m sure I can ask the bursar for his file, if there’s anything else you’d like to know,” Lorimer said.

“I’d like to see it,” Thursday said. “Thank you.”

“Not at all.”

 

Lorimer walked Thursday back to the bursar’s office, where the bursar, now looking through the records of Greats students, easily produced a file— with a name in block letters written across the tab.

MORSE, ENDEAVOUR

  _Endeavour_?

Then Thursday had to hold back a chuckle. This, he felt, _had_ to be his Morse.  He felt a surge of pride, remembering the lad’s scowl and firm shake of the head. He may have been through hell, but he still had his boundaries; he wasn’t about to reveal what he obviously thought was an embarrassment of a Christian name.

He flipped the file open.  

Date of Birth – 24 September, 1938.

 

That would make him 26. Thursday wavered his head a bit back and forth—he looked a bit young for 26, but it was within mark of what he had guessed.

 

But there was an odd thing: his parents were listed, there, too: A Cyril and Gwen Morse, with an address in Lincolnshire.

If the lad had parents, wouldn’t they likely have come looking for him?

Was there someone else he might ask?

 

“Professor,” Thursday asked Lorimer. “You wouldn’t happen to remember if Morse had any particular friends when he was up, do you?”  

“Oh yes, he generally ran with Belboroughs’ set. A little odd, but there you are.”

“Why is that?” Thursday asked.

“Like I said: he was a scholarship boy. Belboroughs’ group was the posh set, you see. His father owned the East Indies Steamship Company. And then, Morse’s best friend, I would say, was Belborough’s cousin, Anthony Donn.”

“I see,” Thursday said. “And would this Anthony Donn still be in Oxfordshire, then?”

Lorimer laughed, a little haughtily, as if Thursday were a bit obtuse, as if was missing an obvious point.

 

He was an odius little man, really.

 

“Inspector, I don’t think he’ll prove too difficult to find. He’s the sixth earl of Marston, don’t you know.”

*****

 

 Loath as he was to admit it, Lorimer had a point: If what the professor said was true, then Anthony Donn was a member of one of the—if not _the_ —wealthiest familes in Oxfordshire. It wasn’t exactly difficult to find, the big stone pile on Lake Silence.

A liveried servant led him past several high-ceilinged rooms to the doorway of a study, where a slight, well-put together young man sat behind a large desk. The man looked up as they came in, taking a meditative drag on his cigarette, a flicker of confusion passing over his face.

“Sir,” the servant said. “This gentleman is from the police.”

“Detective Inspector Thursday, Oxford City Police,” Thursday said, flashing his warrant card.

Donn stood up abruptly, a faint crease between his brows, and came around the desk.

“Lord Marston, is it?” Thursday asked.

The man held up a hand with a graceful wave, as if to ward the name off. “Tony. Please,” he said, offering his hand.

Thursday took it, and Tony gestured with a nod for him to take a seat in one of two large, red armchairs grouped around a small table, that stood right under a window

 

“To what do I owe this visit, Inspector?” he asked, lowering himself in into the second chair.

“I’m looking for some information about someone who I believe may have been an old friend of yours. From Oxford. Endeavour Morse.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot up then, as if he didn’t know what Thursday was on about.

“Do you not know him?” Thursday asked.  

“Oh, yes, I knew him,” Tony said. “We were best friends when we were up. You’ll have to forgive me if I looked surprised: I’m just not sure if I ever heard that name said out loud before.”

Before Thursday could ask what he meant by that, Tony’s face grew solemn, his brow furrowed with concern. “I say, he’s all right, isn’t he? He isn’t in any sort of trouble, is he?”

 

A lie of omission, Thursday thought, certainly couldn’t hurt; it would protect the lad’s privacy, keep his story secret until when or if he ever wanted to tell it. And, at any rate, it wasn’t even entirely clear yet if they were speaking of the same person.

 

“Yes, he’s fine. We’ve just been trying to clear up a few things.”

Tony’s frown didn’t dissipate. It was, after all, an enigmatic answer.

 

 “I’d be happy to help any way I can,” Tony said, “but I’m afraid I haven’t seen Pagan for years.”

“Pagan?” Thursday asked.

Tony shrugged. “That’s what we all called him. At university. Sounds ludicrous, I know. My cousin, Bruce, coined it. When we met Pagan, he told us he didn’t have a Christian name, so Bruce decided, of course, that he must be a . . .”

“Pagan,” Thursday concluded.

Tony nodded.

“So, you knew Endeavour Morse, from school, then?”

“Yes, we met in our first year,” Tony said, stubbing out his cigarette into a small glass ashtray that sat on the round table between them.  

“Can you tell be about him?”

“He was quiet,” Tony said, then quickly seemed to reconsider. “Well, mostly quiet.  He made himself unpopular at times—he had a habit of playing his records a little too loudly for most of his neighbors’ liking. Opera,” he added, as if the one word said it all.

 

 

Thursday nodded, remembering the vehemence with which the lad had nodded when Win asked him about music. It all fit.

 

“So, what happened? He was sent down, I understand,” Thursday said.

“Yes, He fell for a girl in our group. Susan. And she for him. They were engaged, about a year, I’d say. And then she went back to her childhood sweetheart. And he was crushed.”

He relit a fresh cigarette with a flash of silver and took a thoughtful drag on it before shaking his head sadly.

“Then, we had some terrible rows, he and I. I suppose I went too far over the line,” Tony said.

“About what? Why is that?”

“Well, about his behavior,” Tony said, with a rueful laugh, as if the answer was obvious. “It was ridiculous. He stopped applying himself at all. Just mooned about with his histrionic records. I told him ‘you had better just leave off with this.’ I mean Susan was a beautiful girl, but Pagan could hardly afford to throw his scholarship away.”

 

Thursday couldn’t help but wince—the lad seemed a bit prickly, and any perceived slight about his middle class background could not have gone over well.

 

Tony gave a lopsided smile as if knew what Thursday was thinking and agreed with it.

“Then, I went even further: I denigrated his sacred records, told him he was acting like a character out of one of his operas. But then,” and here he waved his hands imploringly, defensively,  “Who the hell throws his life away over a broken engagement?”

 

Thursday could tell right away that Anthony Donn was not the sort to do any such thing, that much was clear. He was one of those crisp and neat upper-crust men who are raised from childhood to keep a stiff upper lip. One of those Englishmen who tells his wife “well, done, old girl,” at the birth of their first child.

 

“He got sent down eventually,” Tony said. “Then he joined the army. I talked to him on the telephone the night before he left, and I thought . . . well, I thought we were all right again. But he must have still been angry with me. I tried to send him a few letters, but they all came back, unopened.”

He shrugged and took a drag on his cigarette, this time a little wistfully.

 

It could be him, then. His Morse could be Endeavour Morse. But there was one thing that didn’t quite fit.

 

“Endeavour Morse’s parents are living though, isn’t that right?” Thursday asked. “He has parents in Lincolnshire?”

Tony shook his head. “He’s only got his father.”

“His records listed two parents,” Thursday countered. “Cyril and Gwen Morse.”

“Oh,” Tony said, “Gwen.” He stubbed out the second cigarette and said, “Gwen’s not his mother. His parents divorced when he was young, you see, and his father remarried. Gwen’s his stepmother. His real mother died when he was twelve or so. That’s when he went to live with his father and Gwen.”

 

Thursday said nothing, allowing this information to sink in. He had seen it often enough on the job—fathers remarrying and starting new families, effectively abandoning their children from earlier marriages.

 

“So, you’ve met them, then? His father and Gwen?” Thursday asked, trying to put the pieces together.  

“Yes, when I went to collect Pagan or to drop him off at the end of term. I was never exactly invited in for tea. I don’t think there was a lot of love lost there.”

 

And the last pieces fit.

_There wasn’t a lot of love lost there._

And so they didn’t go looking.  

 

“And when was the last time you spoke to him?” Thursday asked.

“He was at his father’s house. He seemed all right,” he laughed again. “He seemed almost happy that he’d be getting out of that house. One more night, he said, and he was getting the bus to come back to Oxford, to report for basic training.”  

“So that was the last time you heard from him,” Thursday said. “When would that be?”

“Sometime in early 1960, it would have been. Ah, I remember, it was right before Valentine’s Day. I remember making a joke with him, that at least he’d be missing an appalling party a friend of ours was planning to give. Ice cupids and rose petals, the women all in pink and red. It sounded rather like going into a perfumed, Victorian, sentimental nightmare.”

 

Thursday felt a twinge then, that perhaps he was not, after all, on the right path.

  _1960_?

Anthony Donn must have caught the grim look on Thursday’s face, because he again furrowed his brow. “You . . . so you’ve seen him? Pagan?”

In the question, Thursday could hear it--the sadness, the regret. It was clear that this Donn fellow had missed him.

 

If Endeavour Morse was, indeed, his Morse, and if his Morse was going to make a new life for himself, he could use an influential friend like Anthony Donn in his corner. Out of pure coppers’ instinct, Thursday decided to answer honestly.

 

“Yes,” Thursday said. “Well, _a_ Morse, at any rate,” he amended. “He didn’t give any other name.”

Tony smiled fondly, as if to say, “that must be him, then.”

 

“You wouldn’t . . . ,” Tony began uncertainly. “You wouldn’t pass on my number, would you?  In case it’s him, and he’s lost it?  In case he’d like to get in touch?”   

“Certainly,” Thursday said. “I could do that.”

Tony got up from his chair and walked over to the desk. He took a piece of paper from the top of the mess there and crooked his left hand around the page, readying to write.

Then he handed Thursday the paper—blank but for the name _Tony_ and a phone number in neat, careful, back slant print.

So, they had that in common, too.

“Your handwriting is just like Morse’s,” Thursday said. 

Tony looked at him, confused.

“It must be because you’re both left-handed,” Thursday concluded.

 

But Tony shook his head. “Pagan’s not left-handed. And his handwriting is quite different from mine: miniscule and loopy.”

This gave Thursday pause. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Of course. I’ve seen Pagan’s handwriting many times. I’d recognize anything he’d written right away. And besides that, we lefties love to commiserate, you know, sharing all of our experiences with tyrannical schoolmasters who tried to force us to change. I’d have remembered something like that about even the merest of aquintences, let alone about Pagan.”

 

A thought occured to Thursday then, and he found himself hoping he was wrong, even if it meant he was on the wrong track, even if it meant he had wasted the bulk of the day following a false lead.

 

Because hadn’t he heard somewhere... something to the effect that left-handed people used the right hemisphere of their brains more efficiently, the side associated with abstractions and higher mathematics?

If Morse was not left-handed, did Durrell decide to  . . . what, exactly? . . . Make him that way?

 

Or perhaps it need not be true . . . perhaps this Endeavour Morse was not his Morse at all.

 

There would be one way to be sure.

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words.

 

“You wouldn’t happen to have a photograph, would you?” Thursday asked. “Just to make certain?”

“Of course,” Tony said.

He led Thursday into a library, with walls painted a deep red and bright-white framed windows that extended almost from floor to ceiling. He opened the top of a window seat and pulled out a photo album, bound in sky-blue cloth, with OX X drawn on the cover in purple marker, the inside of the O drawn in with a heart.

“Our group—there were ten of us, so the girls called us OX X. Two of them are the ones who made this album,” Tony explained, as if keen for Thursday to know that he didn’t typically decorate his books with purple hearts.

 

He passed Thursday the book, and he flipped it open—and there he was, right on the first page, turning to look over his shoulder, holding what looked to be a punting pole.

It was unmistakably his Morse.

His face was fuller, more relaxed—but those wide eyes, the bright blueness of which was apparent even in the black and white photograph, he would know anywhere.

 

Tony came around to Thursday’s side, tilting his head to look, as if to be sure Thursday was looking at the right person, and, sure enough, he indicated the photo.

“That’s him there,” Tony said. “Pagan.”

 

Thursday considered the photograph and found he couldn’t help but compare it to the photograph he had seen earlier, the one hanging in the gilt frame in the hallway of the maths building, of Morse Fox-Hudgens-Browne.

 

Because it had bothered Thursday, the question: Durrell must have had hundreds of bright students over the years, students in his very own department. Why go seeking someone who had been sent down? A Greats scholar of all things?

 

But the answer was there, in the photograph. There was an uncertainty in Endeavour Morse’s expression that the haughty face of Morse Hudgens-Fox-Browne had decidedly lacked. There was a degree of insecurity in his beaming face. Almost a neediness.

Might an eagerness to please, a desire to belong _somewhere_ , have made him a more tempting target?

 

Was Endeavour Morse singled out not only for his abilities, but for his temperament as well?

 

His mother died when he was twelve, when he was sent to live with a father and stepmother who didn’t particularly want him.

 

And there had been that faint flush of happiness blossoming across his face simply because Thursday had praised his work in the garden.

 

And look, too, at how quickly the lad had latched on to him. Thursday had thought—had hoped—that it was because he saw something in him worthy of his trust. Morse _did_ see the differences between him and Durrell, didn't he? He wasn't so brainwashed that he was just falling in step with whoever seemed to be in authority, was he?

Thursday felt almost ill at the thought, at the ghost of the idea that he and Durrell might have something in common, even if the link existed only in the lad's mind. 

 

Thursday had heard of cases in which hostages, after periods of isolation from others, gradually grew attached to their captors. Did Durrell think Morse might harbor such a tendency? That his prisoner might have, over time, accept his place and become his protégé?

If so, he must have miscalculated.

Or did he? Because what was the lad doing there at all, in the midst of it? Why hadn't he simply taken off though a back door?

 

“Inspector?” Tony asked, watching Thursday carefully, the worry again clear on his face. “Is he the Morse you were asking about, then?”

Thursday wasn’t quite sure what to say. It was his Morse, and it wasn’t.

“Yes,” he said, finally.

 

He took one last look at the photograph, at Morse smiling warmly into the camera.

Thursday wondered if Morse might ever smile that way again. Or if perhaps the rescue really had come too late.  

****

The army recruiting office was just a few blocks away from Lonsdale. It didn’t take the duty sergeant long to find the records.

“Morse, Endeavour,” he said. “Enlisted on the fifth of January 1960. Was due to report in 10 February, of that same year.  One of our no shows.”

“No shows?” Thursday asked.

The officer shrugged.

“It happens. College boys get sent down. Don’t know what to do, so they come and enlist. Some turn up, some get cold feet, or find something else in the meanwhile. We send a few letters out. But it’s not worth hunting them down. There’s always a fresh batch, after all, at the end of the next term.”

The duty sergeant tossed the file down, with a photograph paper-clipped on top, and it was still his Morse—his face set, the smile gone, his hair cropped so short as to be a leafy cap of waves.

“Shame we lost this one,” the sergeant said, scrutinizing the records. “Scored off the charts in cyphers and cryptology. He was slated to go into Signals. Could have made quite a career.”

Thursday could hardly take in anymore.

“Thank you for your time,” he said.

 

He went out the door and settled his hat back onto his head. He stood for a long while, looking down the sidewalk to the bus station just a few blocks away.

So, Tony spoke to Morse the night before he was planning to arrive for basic training, just a few days before Valentine's Day.

But somehow, he never made it to report in.

It was most likely then, that somewhere along this very stretch of sidewalk, more than five years ago, Endeavour Morse disappeared.

And the world had kept revolving, as if nothing at all had happened.

******

Thursday turned a sharp corner on his drive back to the nick, his jaw tight, his hands clutching the wheel so that his knuckles hurt.

So, what then, if you can’t drag a horse to water, you drag him to ....a secret room in your house?

He was brilliant, he was musical, but Morse didn’t completely fit the mold, so what, then? ..... Durrell broke his hand on top of everything else?

And what of that father: He can’t imagine Joan of Sam disappearing for five years and doing nothing. Kids go through rebellious phases, sure. But five years was a bit long for a phase, wasn’t it?

 

*******

Thursday stormed into the nick in a way that sent one young constable scurrying out of his wake like a duck before an angry dog. He stalked down the corridor and into the main bay of desks, where the dark pea green and wood walls seemed to encapsulate the summer heat like a brick oven.

A few lazily humming electric fans perched on desks and filing cabinets did nothing to cool the air, only sent papers stirring on desks like petulant butterflies.

 

At the back of the room, Jakes was seated at a long table covered in piles of paper, with Professor Knight, an elderly don from Balliol. Both of them looked utterly spent, disheveled and disgruntled.

Jakes raised his eyebrows meaningfully as Thursday came in.

“A word, sir.”

Thursday jerked his head to his office door, and Jakes sullenly put his hands into his pockets and moved around the edge of the table to follow him.

As soon as the door to his office was closed, before Thursday could even pick up his pipe, Jakes rounded on him.  

“We have to tell someone,” Jakes said.

Thursday sighed heavily and tapped some tobacco into his pipe. Because it was true, what Jakes had said. And the clock was pushed forward again.  

 

“I don’t know what all of that is about,” Jakes said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the room outside. “But this bloke doesn’t know what he’s doing. It looks like plans and...I just don’t know what all.”

Thursday said nothing, considering.

“We have to tell them about that device. And about that room. And Mr. Bright will have to call in Special Branch. I’m sure he will, once he’s seen all,” Jakes said.

 

 

Thursday held out his hands. “What can I do, Jakes? He’s not even speaking. My fear is, if Special Branch comes in and interrogates him, he’ll clam right up. Possibly for good.”

“Well, you know what?” Jakes said. “That’s too damn bad.”

Thursday frowned. Jakes always had an edge about him. A precision, yes, but a coldness, too. He’d seen the trait in coppers before. In Jakes’ case, Thursday felt sure it was a shield, a mask.

 

It wasn’t that he didn’t have a heart. He just never wanted anyone to know it.

 

“The lad is our best chance at solving these murders, sergeant. He may very well have seen the entire incident,” Thursday countered.

Jakes shook his head, as if he was having none of it. “I think this goes way beyond those murders, sir. And I think you know so, too.”

“Beyond nine murders? On our ground? I don’t give a damn about that machine and these reams of paper. It’s nine lives lost,” Thursday said.

Jakes snorted. “You mean eight, don’t you sir? You’ll never convince me you give a damn about Durrell. Not after what we’ve seen.”

 

Thursday grimaced, as if he planned to brook no argument.

 

Thursday ran a hand through his hair, which he realized now had fallen out of place with the heat and humidity of the day.

“You’re right,” Thursday said, at last.

Jakes raised his eyebrows, as if surprised.

“You’re right,” Thursday repeated. “I wanted to give him time, but.... I’ll bring him in one way or the other. Maybe he can at least look through some mugshots, answer yes and no. He does nod and shake his head. Maybe write a few things? I dunno. But it will have to be done.”

 

And then everything would be just where Thursday did not want it to be.

Out of his control.

**************

Thursday came into the hall and placed two paper bags on a chair before hanging his coat and hat on hooks along the wall. The house was a babble of voices, and he picked them out one by one, listening for a new, fourth one, but none was forthcoming.

He strode down the rest of the hall and looked into the dining room, where Joan and Sam were in a loud discussion, talking over one another so that Thursday couldn’t follow the thread of their conversation.

He found Win in the kitchen. “Where’s the lad?” he asked.

“Ah, you’re home early, then,” she said, putting a hand on his waist. “Came to check on our boy, have you?”

“Yes,” Thursday admitted. “I did find out his name. Morse.”

“Morse?” Win asked.  “Morse what?”

“Just Morse.”  

Win accepted this with a shrug and turned to fill the kettle. “Well, Just Morse is definitely done in. Taking a kip on the couch.”

 “Ah,” Thursday said. It made sense that the lad would be tired after working in the garden, considering he hadn’t been out of that house in . . . five years.

 

Christ.

 

Thursday sighed. “I’ll have to take him in tomorrow. There have been a few developments,” he said.

“Ah, Fred,” Win said. “I don’t think I ever saw anyone so worn down, when I went to the window and saw the two of you out there. Are you sure he’s ready for all of that?”

Thursday grimaced. “Well, he’ll have to be. Has he . . . has he spoken at all?”

“No,” Win said, a little sadly. “Seems happy enough now, though. After you left, he was right back to work. I called him in around half three for a wash up and to have a lemonade—he looked as if was getting a bit too much sun. But when I brought him his glass, he had fallen asleep, right on the sofa.  He looked so knackered, I hated to wake him. He _is_ supposed to be minding that shoulder.”

“I’ll just go have a peek, then,” Thursday said. “See if he’s stirring. I’ll need to talk to him.”

 

 

Thursday padded back down the hall and slid open the door to the small den. The white striped wallpaper seemed to glow in the dying summer light, but the couch below was cast in shadow.

Morse was there, in Sam’s ridiculous shirt, his bony wrist hanging out as his arm dangled over the edge. His face was thrown back, resting in a nest of brown throw pillows, and his limbs were sprawled out over the gold-medallioned-print cushions so as to take every inch of available space. And, indeed—the overlarge couch must seem a luxury after all those years on that narrow mat.

Win was right: there was a bit of color in his face, but it suited him; he looked much less fretful than he had in hospital.

“Morse?” Thursday ventured.

The lad did not stir.

Thursday frowned.

 

It seemed odd for him to be so far out for the count. Perhaps he had gotten his days and nights mixed up in that room, without daylight?  Or had it been intentional? Had he typically slept during the day, when Durrell was at the colleges, and then worked at night?

“Morse?” Thursday asked quietly. He shook one shoulder gently, minding that it was the good one.

“Morse?”

 

Morse’s eyes opened blearily and traced around the room. Then he smiled ruefully and sat up, as if embarrassed at having been caught out at having fallen asleep on the couch.

“’Ts all right,” Thursday said. “Your days and nights are mixed up, I expect.”

The lad shrugged at that, as if in agreement.

“Win’s got tea on, soon.”

Morse nodded and got up, stretching as he stood. He followed Thursday back out into the dining room. Their shadow, the nurse at the hospital had said. The appellation did fit.

 

Once they had gotten out into the dining room, Joan and Sam were bustling about setting the table. Morse looked ready to make himself useful, but Joan said, “We’re about done now. You can help with the washing up, so don’t go wandering off back to sleep soon as tea’s done.”

Morse smiled at that and nodded, slipping back into the chair where he had sat at breakfast that morning.

Tea was shepherd’s pie, and once again, Morse ate whatever was put in front of him, albeit slowly and methodically, his stubborn jaw working away one bite at time.

Joan was full of stories of what had happened at work, and gossip about two of her coworkers, who apparently were walking out together. Sam went on at length about the car he would buy if he had access to unlimited amounts of money. Morse watched their exchanges silently, as if trying to remember how it was done.

“Morse was such a help today,” Win said, passing Sam another piece of pie.

Joan paused, stunned at that. “Morse? Is that your name?”

Morse nodded.

“Morse what?” Joan asked.

“Morse code,” Sam supplied, making a series of beeping and buzzing noises to punctuate the jest.

Usually the lad had smiled at Joan and Sam’s teasing, but this time he dropped his head abruptly, so that he was looking at some fixed point in his lap.

Joan noticed and frowned, turning to Sam. “You shouldn’t tease people about their names. Don’t you remember how wretched it was being called Wednesday Thursday Friday?”

Sam laughed at that. “No one has called me that since I was nine.”

“Can’t see why not,” Joan said smartly. “Name sort of fits. You need a long, posh name to go along with that car that you want to buy. Well, if wishes were horses...”

Sam scowled and dug onto his pie.

 ************

After dinner, Morse seemed to recover himself, bringing the dishes in to Joan and Sam to help them with the washing up. Thursday remained at the table with the newspaper and Win went over to the neighbors’ for her bridge night.

 

Sam disappeared upstairs after a while, and, soon, Thursday heard music coming from the den.

He slowly opened the door to find Morse and Joan sitting on the sofa, their heads side by side—one smooth and dark, the other wavy and fiery—both bent over an album cover. Joan was pointing out who was who in the band.

That reminded Thursday of the bags he had left in the hall. He went to retrieve them and returned to the den.

 

 

“Do you like it?” Joanie was asking, as Thursday came back into the room. 

The lad hesitated, as if he wished he could spare her feelings, and then shook his head.

“Why not?” Joan asked, with a laugh.

 

Morse shrugged, and then they both turned to look at him expectantly as he approached the couch.

 

“Morse,” Thursday said. “I picked you up a few things to tide you over, until we can get you properly fitted out.”

Morse took the bag uncertainly—Thursday thought it would be a sore point—but he nodded his thanks, nevertheless.

 

He looked inside the first bag and then sat for a moment as if stunned. Then, he looked up at Thursday as if he had been knocked breathless, as if Thursday had just given him the keys to that luxury automobile Sam had rattled on about, rather than an album from Woolworth's.

Thursday shrugged. “You said you liked music,” he said.

With trembling hands, Morse pulled the Puccini album from the bag. It was as if his whole body was shaking as he held it, and he looked longingly at the record player.

Joan made an expression of distaste. “Oh, not _that_ ,” she said. “If I have to give that a try, then you have to listen to all of this.”

The lad looked as if he might not last that long, as if he might spontaneously combust while waiting for the Beatles to stop convincing him that they wanted to hold his hand.

 

Thursday was ready to intervene: When he thought about it, he hadn’t recalled any record players or albums around Durrell’s place.

 

Joanie got to hear her records every day; it was probable that Morse had not heard his for five years.

 

But then, he thought that any interference on his part would leave the lad feeling as if he were being coddled—it was best to leave the young people to themselves.

Morse, in the meanwhile, watched the Beatles album revolve, as if willing it with his eyes to spin faster.  

**********

Joanie came into the dining room laughing.

“Well, I told him he should have stuck with my records. That stuff has put him straight to sleep. I’m off to bed myself. Night.”

Thursday went into the den, and sure enough, Morse had fallen asleep again—his eyes softly closed, his face peaceful as Thursday had never seen it.  The Puccini record was still revolving silently around the label.

Thursday returned the needle to the stand, and draped a blanket over Morse. They had thought of trying to make something for him out of Win’s sewing room, but somehow, Thursday felt he actually might prefer it here, in one of the largest rooms in the house, one with windows and a wide door. . .

He hoped he wouldn’t be confused when he woke up. On a lark, Thursday went to the hall and got his hat from the hook, and put it on the coffee table before the sofa. There. If he woke and saw it, it would serve as a reminder of where he was, of whose home he was in.

 

********

At about half five, Thursday was awoken by small noises downstairs. He pulled on his dressing gown and went down the stairs. The lad had fallen asleep so early, he most likely was awake by now.

And sure enough, the sofa in the den was empty.

He passed through the kitchen where a glass filled with an inch or so of water sat on the counter. He knew his Win well enough to know she’d never let the kids leave a glass out before going to bed—she liked everything ship shape and stowed away at night, so all was ready for the morning rush. And sure enough, when Thursday touched the glass, he found it was cool to the touch.

He was glad that Morse had felt free to do that. How long had it been since he was able to simply get himself a glass of water, when he wanted?

 

Thusday felt a hum of worry, though, when he couldn’t find him in the dining room, either. Where could the lad be?

He walked to the back door and looked outside. Morse was there, in the garden, stretched out on the grass, looking up at the stars.

 

As he heard the door open, Morse looked up, his face full of concern, as if he feared that he had woken him.

Thursday waved a dismissive hand. “I sleep light. Years of stakeouts, you know."

Morse nodded slightly, seemingly relieved.

 

Thursday eased himself down on the ground with a grunt—his knees certainty weren’t what they used to be. Morse remained where he was, one arm tucked up, so that his head was resting on the palm of his hand.

 

“I saw a friend of yours, yesterday, I think,” Thursday said.

 

Morse looked at him, eyebrows raised. 

 

“Anthony Donn,” Thursday supplied.  

A glimmer of recognition flickered over his face, and he turned away, looking back up into the vast expanse of sky, flecked with bits of light. A few birds where already beginning to chirp and sing in the hedgerow behind the house, anticipating dawn.

 

And mingled among the sound, came four words.

 

“It wasn’t his fault,” Morse said.

 

His voice was much lower and softer than Thursday would have thought, with just a trace of the north.

 

“It’s my fault, really,” he said. And his words came in breaths not much higher than a whisper, slowly, as if he was remembering, as though he was taking care to form each one. “I just wanted everybody to leave me alone.”

There was just the hint of a sigh, then, and the words, “Be careful what you wish for.”

 

Thursday frowned at that. It certainly wasn’t _his_ fault he was held captive for five years. Was this part of it, then—this self-deprecation, this not expecting much of the world—precisely what had made him so vulnerable to Durrell in the first place?

 

But at least he was talking. At least it was a start. Thursday was almost afraid to say anything, lest he halt the flow of words.

 

Morse seemed to realize this, seemed to know that Thursday was waiting for something more.

 

“He told me, when I woke up . . . that it was my first assignment. That I had been . . . slated for Signals. He said he was sorry he had had . . . to do what he did. But that he had to. . . because I was at a top-secret installation."”

 

“Did you believe him?” Thursday asked.

“Yes.  No.  I don’t know,” Morse said.

 

“What did he do?” Thursday asked.

“I don’t know. I was walking. I was supposed to report early for the duty station bus.” He turned his head and looked at him. “I had joined the Army,” he added by way of explanation.

 

Thursday nodded. This, he already knew.

 

“It was early. I just remember walking. And that it was cold. And that the sun was just starting to come up in the white sky. And then I woke up and everything was white.”

 

His words grew a bit strangled sounding at the end, and the lad cleared his throat. “Sorry. I haven’t really. I haven’t talked to anyone. For a while. I used to talk to myself, but then, I got worried tha . . .  but then I stopped.”

 

Worried that what? That Durrell would get angry? That he was going mad?

 

“Didn’t Durrell ever speak to you?” Thursday asked.  

“He did the first few days. And then after. No. Well, just through writing equations.”

 

Thursday paused at this.

 

“He told me . . . that first week . . . that he had some idea . . . that language detracts from one’s abilities to think mathematically. Sort of a mad idea, really. Real genius, I always thought, harnessed both verbal and mathematical intelligences. . . But that was . . . that was how he ran things. And who was I to . . .”  Morse let the sentence drop and shrugged one shoulder, his face cast up again to the stars.

 

It almost made Thursday’s blood run cold to hear him speak thus—talking about himself as if he were some sort of an experiment, as if he disagreed with how it was run on purely intellectual grounds.

 

“Do you think . . . do you think he meant it .... as a kindness?” Morse asked.

 

Oh, no, lad. Thursday thought. Not for a moment. Is that what Durrell had told him?

Kindness doesn’t keep you locked away from the world in a sound-proofed room.

 

“No,” Morse said, as if reading his thoughts. “I mean the latches. He left them. He knew something might happen, that night, I think. He knew I . . . He knew I didn’t talk anymore. If he had been killed . . . and I was locked there .  . . no one would have known I was there . . . If no one found my room, I would have been . . .” 

 

Entombed alive, Thursday supplied in his head.

 

“Do you think so?” Morse asked.

 

What to tell the lad? The honest answer was still no. But was it important for him to believe there was some goodness, or some kindness, in the only person he had had contact with for five, long, solid years?

 

It was all beyond Thursday.

 

“I don’t know, lad," Thursday sighed. "What do you think?” 

 

“Yes,” he said.  “No.  I don’t know.”

 

“When you wrote your name, I noticed, you’re left handed,” Thursday said.

“Yes,” Morse said, cautiously.  

“Anthony Donn swore that you weren’t. He said you were right-handed,” Thursday said.

Morse’s face went blank. 

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Morse turned his face away, so that he was gazing into the hedgerows. “Well,” Morse began . . . “I guess. What happened is. I stopped believing that I was working for the British government.”

 

He said nothing for a long time. The sky was just beginning to lighten in the east and the birds were flitting about in the leaves, in the weak, watercolor blue light.

 

“Lad, I’m going to have to ask. About that night.”

“I know," Morse said. "I was thinking. I could go with you. Am I supposed to  . . tell the police. . . something official?”

“Make a statement,” Thursday supplied.

“Make a statement,” Morse repeated. “That way, I only have to tell it once.”

 

“Well. It would certainly help, lad. It would get us somewhere. All of those papers,” Thursday sighed again. “We have a don down there, working to sort out what Durrell was doing, but he can’t make heads nor tails of it, according to my sergeant.”

“Papers?” Morse said, a note of interest in his voice. “Oh. I can help you with them.”

 

Thursday drew his brows together, mulling it over.  “Do you suppose you could?” he asked, although he could see all sorts of arguments for conflicts of interest in the idea.

But with Jakes and Professor Knight keeping tabs. . .

 

“Of course, I could,” Morse said. “I’m the one who wrote a lot of it. Aren’t I?”

 

Thursday paused at that. Even though part of him had known that it must be so, he hadn't quite thought of it in that way. 

 

Morse sat up then, looking pale but resolute. 

 

"Do you think you’ll be all right, then?" Thursday asked. "It will only be me and Mr. Bright, the Chief Superintendent.  And my sergeant to record."

“Yes,” Morse said. “No.” He shook his head slightly. “I don’t know.”

 

Well, he looked prepared to do his best, at any rate.

And Thursday could hardly ask for more than that.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Thursday left early that morning and drove the Jag over to Lonsdale.

He had brought the car home the night before with the express purpose of bringing the lad into the station that day, but there were a few things he wanted to check on first, a few loose ends of his own that he wanted resolved.

 

He pulled up along the quiet, tree-lined street and put the car into park. It would be early enough that Professor Clive Durrell’s neighbors would just be rousing themselves, heading out of their front doors to begin the day.

Which suited Thursday just fine.

He wanted to be seen.

And, as luck would have it, a few people were out and about, watching in curiosity as he got out of the car and headed up the cobblestone walk, up to where a single, uniformed officer stood guard. He bounded up the front steps with the air of one who had every right to do so, and then opened the heavy wooden door, leaving it open just a crack behind him.

In the basement, the coding device was just as he and Jakes had left it. Not a cigarette butt of Jakes’ was in sight.

Thursday walked slowly back up the steps, and then up another flight of stairs, up to the second floor. As he passed down the hall, he took a brief look inside the hidden room as he went.

 It was the last time he’d ever see it, he hoped. But he wanted to remember it, just in case there was some fall out over his choice to delay his report, some recompense for what he’d done.

Should he face a disciplinary, he wanted to remember that it had been worth it.

He closed the door and walked further down the hall. Surely, there must be some other evidence in the house that the lad existed?

In a spare bedroom, he found it, in a dresser filled with linens. He popped open a false bottom of one of the drawers. . . . and there they were. Uniforms.

 

So, had Durrell carried on the pretext that Morse was working for the government, that this brick house was some sort of deranged Bletchley Park, for all of the years that the lad was here?

Before Thursday even unfolded the first shirt, he could tell it would be about Morse’s size. And as he snapped it open, there was proof conclusive: his name in black block letters on the khaki name strip. MORSE. There were corporal’s stripes on the sleeves. Had Durrell at some point told Morse that he’d been promoted through the ranks, then? How far had he taken this charade?

Unbelievable.

In another drawer were plain white dress shirts—much like the one Morse was found in. Black dress trousers. Even a few jumpers. All too small for Durrell, all definitely in Morse’s size.

But even though Morse had next to nothing, Thursday had no desire to take any of these things. He’d rather buy the lad an all new wardrobe out of his Christmas savings then to take one thing from this house. And, what’s more, he was sure his family, all of them—not just Win, but Joan and Sam, too—would say the same, if they knew the whole story.

No, he’d take nothing from this house. He’d actually like nothing so much as to burn the place to the ground.

 

As he passed back down the hall, he noticed another door with heavy locks. He opened it to find a spare bathroom, one with no mirror over the sink. Had the lad, what then? Been shuffled around from one room to another? Thursday wasn’t sure how much he wanted to know of the details of his life. It was best not to ask Morse about it, either. It was best to let this, all of this, fade away like a bad dream.

Thursday went back downstairs, emerging from the dark foyer, back out into the sunlight, back to where sparrows were flitting about in the climbing yellow roses, just as if this house were a house like any other, as if it hadn’t been a young man’s private hell for five long years.

 

Whatever may come—no, Thursday would not regret giving Morse these few hours—a chance to catch his breath, a chance for him to find his voice again.

******** 

Back at home, Thursday was greeted by the sounds of his family’s hurried workday breakfast. He picked out the voices one by one—Joan’s and Sam’s and Win’s—but, still, there was no low, soft note amidst their quick chatter. 

When he came into the dining room, Thursday was not greatly heartened—Morse looked as bewildered as ever, watching the quips of conversation sail by from his safe spot in the corner, from the chair that Thursday had already begun to think of as his chair.

Well. Best just to dive in, then.

 

“Are you almost ready, then, Morse?”

Morse nodded.

“How’s breakfast?” Thursday asked.

He nodded again, as if to assure him that all was satisfactory.

His questioning of Morse drew the attention of Joan and Sam, which, it seemed, caused Morse almost to shrink, to retreat further.

If Morse wasn’t going to be able to talk with them at breakfast, how was he going to get through making a statement down at the nick?

“Can you say something, lad?” Thursday asked.

Morse looked down, rubbing the curls at the back of his nape.

Not encouraging.

It struck Thursday: In the early morning, when they had been in the garden, the world had still been soft and dark, Morse's face cast in shadow. He had found it easier, there, perhaps.  Joan and Sam tearing off in two directions was perhaps a bit much for him.

Thursday had almost given up on hearing an answer when Morse said softly, “What should I say?”

So. Just nervous, then.

“Oh, so you know how to talk?” Sam asked.

A flicker of annoyance flashed over Morse’s features. The old pride was still there, somewhere, then.  “Yes,” Morse said, his eyes trained on his plate. “I know how. I just haven’t really. Had occasion to. That’s all.”

“Well, I suppose we don’t give you much chance to get a word in edgewise, do we?” Joan asked.

Morse shrugged with a slight smile that showed that he didn’t disagree.

Joan laughed.

“So, will you tell us what the station is like when you get back?” Sam asked.

“If you want me to,” Morse said agreeably.

“You know the rules,” Thursday intoned. “We don’t talk about the nick at home. Don’t try to trick him into it.”

Morse blinked, as if he were being included in the reprimand.  

Sam turned to him. “Sorry about that. We’ve never been allowed down. Not even when Dad forgot his sandwich and I offered to take it to him.”

“Speaking of which,” Win said, “Here you are, then,” she said, giving him a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

“Hmmmm. What’s on for today, love?”

“You’ll just have to find out,” Win said. “Here you are, Morse. I’ve made one for you, too.”

Morse stared at it for a moment, as if he didn’t know what it was.

“It’s a sandwich. For your lunch,” Win explained.

“Oh,” Morse said, reaching out for the small parcel. “Thank you.”

Thursday took it from him and tucked it into his pocket with his own, as Win straightened his lapels for him.

“You’ll do, Fred. Come home safe.”

 *******

Morse stayed one step behind him as they went up the stairs to the second floor of the station—reminding Thursday once again of how the nurses over at the Radcliffe had called Morse “their shadow.”

The noise of the nick, Thursday had feared, might be overwhelming to the lad: Men smoking and cursing and calling to one another, arguments by the file cabinet, the whirr of the useless electric fans.

And Morse did, indeed, seem to falter as they came into the large room; the wood paneling and heavy pea green walls gave the office a closed-in feeling, a feeling magnified by the scattering of sharp-cornered desks and the displacement of chairs, all of which made the place so difficult to navigate.

Morse’s face brightened, though, when he saw the table laden with papers and notebooks, where Sergeant Jakes sat laboring with Professor Knight.

“Ah,” Thursday said, leading Morse over. “Sergeant Jakes. Professor Knight. This is Morse.”

 

Jakes was eyeing the lad curiously, and who could blame him? He had been the one to have found the hidden room; Morse might not know it, but Jakes knew his story without ever having met him. 

 

“I thought he might be able to give these papers a bit of a shufti, see what he makes of them,” Thursday said.

“Well, I don’t know...,” Professor Knight began.

 

But Morse was already leafing through some of the papers.

 

“Why have you put this here?” he asked. “And did you add this on?”

“Yes,” Professor Knight said, slowly.

“Why, you’ve completely ignored Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem,” Morse said.

“What do you  . . ?.” Knight began.

“In any consistent formal system F, within which a certain amount of arithmetic can be carried out, there are statements of the language of F that cannot be proved or disproved in F. There will always be problems that can’t be answered within a certain set of axioms,” Morse said, matter-of-factly. 

“Yes, but . . .,” Knight protested.  

But Morse just shook his head as if he found the don a disappointment and moved the paper to another pile. Then he looked at the next and set it in another place, and then the next, and the next, until he was sorting through the papers rather quickly. It wasn’t clear what sense he was making of it all, but he did give the impression that he was at least getting the ruddy things into some sort of order, making some sort of headway.

 

“But he’s completely rearranging what I’ve just gone through. We’ll never get through the half of it at this rate,” Professor Knight protested.

 

Jakes was a fairly newly-minted sergeant, but he’d been a copper long enough to place confidence in confidence.

 

“Let him give it a go,” Jakes said, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Let’s see what he comes up with.”

Meanwhile, Morse was flipping through the pages with a speed almost matching the revolving of the blades of the circular fan.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Thursday said. “I’ll just go and have a word with Mr. Bright.”

“Mmmmmm.” Morse said, absentmindedly, as if dismissing him.

Thursday frowned for a moment, and then made his way through the flotsam of the office over to Mr. Bright’s door.

********

“Good morning, sir,”  Thursday said, coming into Mr. Bright’s office.

The room was one of the most spacious and orderly in the station, with a round table set under a tall window, where a stream of sunlight reached in, illuminating drifting motes of dust.

“There’s a few things I should brief you on, sir.”

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Bright said, gesturing for him to sit in the chair before his desk.

“First off, I found something a tad odd, in Clive Durrell’s basement,” Thursday said.  “It looks to be some sort of an enigma machine, a coding device. Could be just a pet hobby, building such a thing. There’s no telling if its operable. Wasn’t sure what to make of it, to be honest.”

“An enigma machine? Good heavens. What would a professor of mathematics be doing with such a thing?”

“That’s what I was wondering, sir." 

 “Quite,” Mr. Bright said, steepling his fingers and nodding thoughtfully. “And is there any news on our young man? How he came to be there?”

“It seems, he was always there, sir,” Thursday said.

“What’s this?” Mr. Bright asked.

“We found a small room, hidden behind a book case, with a door with heavy latches.”

Mr. Bright’s thin face went utterly still, and Thursday could see the shift, the moment the implications of what he had said sunk in.

“It seems he’d been kept there,” Thursday said, grimly.

“As some sort of captive?” Mr. Bright asked.  “Why?”

“As a sort of protégé, perhaps?” Thursday suggested. “The walls of his room were covered in problems he was working on, formulas. He was a student, up at Lonsdale, a Greats man. A don there told me that Durrell had been obsessed with him—his words— that he had wanted the lad to change his course of study. Instead, the lad was sent down, after his fiancé broke it off with him, and he joined the Army. And that’s when the trail disappears.”

“So, what, then? Durrell kidnapped him? Held him hostage?” Mr. Bright rasped.

“It looks that way, sir.”

“So, if you know this, you must have a name for him, yes?” Mr. Bright asked.

“Yes, sir,” Thursday said. “Endeavour Morse. From what I’ve been able to track down, and from what he’s confirmed himself, it seems as if he disappeared on his way to report in for duty. On February 10, 1960.”

“Good heavens,” Mr. Bright said.

*************

Morse eyed the room warily before sitting down. It must be just the sort of room he hated—small, closed off, no windows. Thursday found himself wishing that he had pressed his luck, that he had asked if they could meet more informally, in Mr. Bright’s office, at the table by the window, amidst the cozy smell of old books and tobacco.

“Name?” Jakes said.

“Inspector Thursday just told it to you,” Morse said. “Out there.”

“For the record,” Jakes said.

“Oh,” Morse said, “Morse.”

“Full name?” Jakes said.

A flicker of discomfort twitched across Morse’s angular features. “Endeavour Morse.”

Jakes raised his eyebrows before beginning to write. “Like the word?”

“Yes,” Morse said. “Like the word.”

 

“So,” Mr. Bright said, leaning forward and clasping his hands, looking upon Morse in a grandfatherly manner, “You were living there, then. At Professor Durrell’s?”

Morse appeared to consider this a moment before answering. It _was_ putting his situation euphemistically, to say the least.

“Yes,” Morse said, at last.

“For how long?” Mr. Bright asked.  

Morse flicked a look to Thursday as if to be sure he was giving the right answer. Thursday alone in the group knew that Morse had not realized just how much time had passed while he remained locked in that small world.

“Five years,” Morse said.  

Jakes’ pen paused for a moment, and, out of the corner of his eye, Thursday could see the sergeant’s jaw grow tight.

 

“How did you come to be there?” Mr. Bright asked, his quiet, raspy voice modulating itself so as to be encouraging. 

“I was walking to the recruiting station. It was early, I remember. Because the sky was still white,” Morse said. “It was February. It was quiet. No one was about. And then I  . . . someone . . . and then something smelled sweet. And then I was there. In that room. And it was white and quiet there, too.”

“Chloroform, maybe?” Thursday conjectured, turning to Mr. Bright.

 

“I thought. . . I thought you wanted to know. About that night. About those people,” Morse said.

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Bright said. “But it’s important to understand how you came to be there in the first place.”

“Oh,” Morse said, half-heartedly, as if he didn’t see what connection the one thing might have to do with the other. Then he took a steadying breath. “He told me it was my first assignment. I knew him from when I was up,” he continued.

“Who is this?” Jakes interrupted.

“What?” Morse asked.

“Who told you it was your first assignment?” Jakes asked.

“That man,” Morse said.

“Clive Durrell?” Thursday prompted.

“Yes,” Morse said. “I knew him, from when I was at Lonsdale. That he was a maths don.  He told me he was working for Special Branch. That I was slated for Signals. That I was at a safe house. Where we’d be working on problems, to help with projects they were trying to complete.”

“What projects?” Jakes asked, sharply.  And it would make sense, buried as he had been in an avalanche of paperwork, that Jakes would want to get some answers.

“I don’t know,” Morse said softly. “I never saw the whole of everything. Only pieces. He didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t talk to me.”

“What do you mean he didn’t _talk_ to you?” Jakes asked incredulously. Mr. Bright made a slight movement with his hand, as if to urge Jakes to form his questions less caustically, but Morse answered, nonetheless.  

“He didn’t talk to me. He just wrote. He just set the problems. Some of them have no answer. Some of them are impossible,” Morse said.

“Didn’t you try to leave?” Jakes asked.

“Yes. At first,” Morse said.

 

“At _first_?” Jakes said, and there was in his tone something of disgust. Thursday didn’t understand it; it seemed as if Jakes was taking something in the lad’s story a little too close to heart.

 

“All right, sergeant, we can take it from here,” Thursday said.

“Quite,” Mr. Bright said crisply.

 

But Morse kept watching Jakes. “Sometimes I tried to leave. A few times the locks were left undone. And I thought I could go. I mean, I never heard of any department of Special Branch where soldiers were not even allowed outside, have you?” he asked—and here his voice wavered, warbled a bit high, a bit cracked. It was as if he’d been told he was wrong on that score so many times, that he didn’t quite trust his own judgment anymore.

And Thursday understood: he’d seen the prisoners of war who had been kept in solitary, seen how loneliness can rip into a man worse than pure physical torture.

 

“But it was always a trap,” Morse said, simply.

“A trap? How so?” Mr. Bright said.

“He’d just be waiting. Waiting to drag me back, to lock me back up. And each time he would stay away longer and longer. And then it was just me. Just me and the numbers on the walls. And I thought I was dying. The sevens looked so sharp. I don’t like sevens much. They’re supposed to be lucky, though, aren’t they?  But they’re sharp—it’s like their bones are sticking out, isn’t it? Even now, sometimes I still write them as fast as possible. So, they can’t catch up with me.”

His eyes went slightly unfocused as he spoke, and Thursday heard it, in that detail. So, he’d been half starved into madness. Into obedience.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Thursday noticed that Jakes had stopped writing, that he’d gone completely still.

“So, after a while, you stopped trying then? You just stayed there,” Jakes said, finally, and it was a statement, not a question.

 

Thursday had had enough. “Is this pertinent?” he growled. “All of these details?”  

“We don’t know what those papers are about do we, sir?  If it’s something untoward, if it’s espionage, we need to know what he’s been complicit in,” Jakes said.

“Jakes has a point, Thursday,” Mr. Bright said.

Morse didn’t answer.

“He just said he didn’t know what he was working on,” Thursday countered. “It’s not as if Durrell took him into his confidence.”

“So you stayed and worked on whatever Durrell told you to do, is that it?” Jakes asked again.

Morse’s gaze flicked from Jakes to Thursday and then back to Jakes.

“Yes,” Morse said. “No. I don’t know.”

Jakes rolled his eyes. “Yes or no?”  

“Yes. I suppose. Yes. No. I don’t. I don’t know,” Morse said.  

 

It wasn’t clear to Thursday that Morse even knew what he was answering anymore. He decided to fast forward to the night in question, aiming to wrap this inquiry up as soon as he could.

 

“So. That night. The door was left unlocked?” Thursday asked.

“Yes,” Morse said. “At first, I was afraid to risk it. But then I thought. Maybe he’d relaxed. Maybe he thought I had given up. Because. Well. Because... But when I went downstairs, suddenly, there was shouting. And then screaming.”

“How did you end up there at all, then? You were found in the doorway, is that right?” Mr. Bright said, looking through the file. “Why did you come into that room? You could have gone out the other way.”

“People were screaming,” Morse said. “Shouting.”

“So, you thought to help?” Mr. Bright asked.

“Yes,” Morse said.

“What did you think you might do against an armed attacker?” Mr. Bright asked, not unkindly.

“I didn’t know he had a gun,” Morse said.  

“Didn’t you hear the shots?” Mr. Bright asked.  

“There weren’t any shots,” Morse said.  

Jakes leaned back languidly in his chair. “How’s that?” he asked.  

“There weren’t any shots,” Morse repeated.  

 

Mr. Bright turned to Thursday. “A silencer, perhaps? Professional job?” he asked.

 

“So, you didn’t hear any gunshots?” Thursday clarified.

“No, just people crying out. It was dark. I couldn’t see why they were screaming,” Morse said.  

 

“All the lights had been shot out,” Thursday said, turning to Mr. Bright. “There was shattered glass everywhere.”

Morse nodded. “I don’t think he knew I was there. I think that’s why . . . that’s why I wasn’t killed. He didn’t know I was there. Because, well, no one  knew I was there, did they?”

“Do you think you’d recognize him if you saw him? The gunman?” Mr. Bright asked.

“Maybe,” Morse said. “He was tall. Fairly large. He had cropped hair. I don’t know. It was dark, but....maybe. Yes. I think I would.”

“And what of this device?” Mr. Bright asked. “In the basement?”

Morse regarded him blankly. “What device?”

“That enigma machine,” Jakes said.  

Mr. Bright’s eyebrows shot up. Thursday scowled. Jakes was not supposed to know about the damned thing.

 

“A what?” Morse asked, looking from one to the other of them, confused. “Like in the war?”

 

“I think that we’ve got what we needed here,” Thursday said, standing up. “We’ll have to have records bring some mugshots over, so he can take a look. And Morse has offered to have a look at those papers, as well, to tell us what he makes of it all.”

Mr. Bright appeared to mull this over. “Yes. I’m willing to allow it. As long as he is explaining as he goes, to Sergeant Jakes and Professor Knight.”

“Is that all right with you Morse?” Thursday asked.

“Yes,” Morse said. “I never saw it all together. Just problems and bits and pieces and none of them ever seemed to fit, did they?”

Jakes flicked Thursday a doubtful look.

“I’d like to know,” Morse said. “I  . . . I want to know. What it was all for.” He shook his head bewilderely. “What was the point of it?”

Jakes nodded. “All right. Come on, then. Can’t be any worse than that daffy old bloke,” he said, pulling a cigarette from out of his jacket.

Morse looked bemused, but followed Jakes out the door.

*********

As soon as the two younger men left the room, Mr. Bright rounded on Thursday.  

“I’m surprised at you, Thursday. When exactly did you first find out about this?” he asked, shrewdly. 

“The lad needed time, sir. You’ve seen him. He wasn’t even speaking until last night.”

“I should have been made aware of his at once. It's hardly as if the murders and the circumstances surrounding this young man can be separated. A coding device, you say? That might shed a whole new light on that gathering, as I'm sure you're only too well aware.  If the Lonsdale Moral Science Club was not indeed an academic club, but rather....if they were involved in something of that nature, then....this could be a matter of espionage, of national defense.”

Thursday shrugged. “Or, it could be just some crackpot project. It ought to be obvious that the man was deranged.”

Mr. Bright looked unimpressed.

“I took a calculated risk, sir,” Thursday countered. “It might have put a delay on some things, but in exchange, we have an eyewitness, someone who will be able to identify the gunman.”

“It has to do with the case, then. Not the boy?” Mr. Bright asked.

 

“Like I said. He needed a bit of time. I won’t lie. I wouldn’t want to stand by and watch some big wheels from Special Brach bombard the lad with questions until he cracked. You can see how close he is to the edge, sir.”

 

Bright said nothing for a moment, then shuddered. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever see sevens the same.” 

 

“With no one to speak to, in that horror of a house for five years?” Thursday continued. “It’s amazing he’s doing as well as he is. I’ve had him at my table, sitting with my children. No, I’m not going to throw him over to Special Branch before he’s had half a chance.”

Mr. Bright appeared to consider this.

“I went over there this morning,” Thursday said quietly. “Plenty of neighbors saw me. It wouldn’t hurt to say I found it this morning. A few hours, sir? In exchange for giving a lad a fighting chance?”

“And Jakes knew nothing of this?” Mr. Bright asked.

“No, sir,” Thursday said.

Mr. Bright gave him a sidelong glance. Then he said, “He certainly seemed invested in the case.” 

Thursday shrugged. He had to admit, he was surprised at the vehemence with he had addressed Morse.

“Reminds him of another case, maybe?” Thursday suggested.

 

Suddenly, there were raised voices from the room outside.

 

 “He’s completely oversimplified Nietzsche!” Morse shouted.

“Hey!” Jakes shouted. “Hey!”

Thursday thundered out the door, followed by Mr. Bright. Out amidst the bay of desks, a group of constables and Professor Knight looked on, as Morse and Jakes struggled in some sort of parody of a tug-of-war over a set of papers—Morse clutching them in his hands, trying to rip them apart, Jakes holding on to them as well, raising his hand higher, as if trying to pull them from Morse’s grip and then up out of his reach.

 

 “You want to have a go at me?” Jakes shouted. “Good! I’m glad!”

“Jakes!” Thursday barked.

But Jakes was looking delighted at Morse’s outburst, smiling oddly as Morse struggled, fighting to get the papers from his hands. Morse finally let out a roar of frustration and took several badly-aimed kicks at Jakes’ shins.

“There you go! There you go, you little bastard!” Jakes shouted. “Now that’s what you should have done years ago!”

His words seemed to send Morse over the edge, and, in, one final burst of anger, he lurched upwards, tearing the papers away and twisting around, sharply, trying to free his hand from Jakes’ grip.   

 

In that instant, Morse’s face went white,  even as he clutched the papers triumphantly in his fist.

 

“Morse?” Thursday prompted.  

 

Morse stared at him, his blue eyes wide, and then, slowly, a stain of blood began to blossom through his shirt.

Jakes looked down at him, and, seeing the red seeping through the white, let go of him as if Morse was on fire, putting his hands up defensively, as if to show he intended no harm.

“He was having a go at me. I was just trying to stop him from ripping those up, from destroying evidence,” Jakes bleated.

 

Thursday gave Jakes a pacifying nod before turning to Morse. It was clear Morse had started the thing. 

 

“Well, you will have torn your stitches. We’ll have to go back to the hospital, that’s all,” Thursday said.

“No,” Morse said, paling further. “No. It’s fine. It really is. It was my fault. It will stop.”

“Morse,” Thursday said.

 “Please. I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to go back.”

And in the plea, Thursday heard the words that the lad didn’t say.

 

 _If_ _you_ _take_ _me_ _back_ _there_ , _you’ll_ _leave_ _me_ _there_. _Won’t_ _you_?

 

Thursday sighed. “I know where maybe we can get you patched up.”

 

*****

“Dr. DeBryn?” Thursday called, questioningly, as he led Morse down the cold, tiled hall.

“Yes?” the doctor replied from the room within. 

DeBryn looked up as they came around the corner, blinking at them curiously over his glasses. 

“Ah,” DeBryn said. “So, who do we have here, then?”

 

Morse looked at him in wonderment.

 

“This is Morse, doctor. He’s torn a few stitches, I’m afraid. I was wondering if we might trouble you with a repair. The lad’s a bit shy about going back to hospital,” Thursday explained.

“It was you,” Morse said. “It was you, then.”

Dr. DeBryn tilted his head slightly. “What’s this?” he asked.

“It was your voice I heard. I didn’t know if I could understand words anymore. But I understood you right away,” Morse said. “You said, ‘call for an ambulance.’ I remember your voice.”

 

DeBryn cast a glance toward Thursday. Thursday grimaced, nodding to let him know that he’d explain later. DeBryn knew nothing of the locked, hidden room; to the doctor, Morse had simply been another student at the scene.

“Well, then,” DeBryn said gently, with a bit less of an edge that was his wont. He seemed to pick up that something about Morse was a bit off.

Though Thurday had the highest respect for DeBryn professionally, he couldn’t help but find him a bit of a queer fish at times. But, to Thursday’s surprise, it seemed the man was more in-tuned with people than he would have imagined.  

“Have a seat, and we’ll see what we can do, shall we?” DeBryn said.

Morse sat tentatively on the edge of the table.

“If you could,” Dr. DeBryn prompted, miming the unbuttoning of a shirt.

“Oh,” Morse said. He worked the buttons undone one by one and then eased one freckled shoulder out of the white shirt. 

“Ah, well, then. Not the end of the world, is it? We can get this repaired in no time, I’d say,” the doctor said.

Morse looked blankly off and away, towards a large metal sink and stand in the corner. “Thank you,” he said.

“Not fond of the sight of blood, are we?” DeBryn asked shrewdly.

“No, not overly so, no,” Morse admitted.

 

“Do you have any plans, for the weekend?” DeBryn asked.

“No,” Morse said, as if he had never entertained such a question.

Thursday waited for the lad to return the polite query, but, when nothing was forthcoming, he prompted, “Do _you_ have any plans, doctor?”

Morse startled, as if suddenly remembering the rules to an old game. “Yes, do you have anything planned?”

“I thought I might run up and do a bit of fishing. Of course, my sister has been badgering me for a while for a visit, but I’ve heard the weather’s going to be particularly fine. Seems a shame to spend the day indoors,” DeBryn said, starting work on Morse’s shoulder.

 

It was more than Thursday had ever heard DeBryn speak about anything other than a corpse. Morse seemed lulled by the droning words, appearing to tune  out all else save the sound of his voice.

“I like to be outside, too,” Morse said.

“Do you? Thought I might run down to Devon. Wonderful for trout this time of year. Everything is in the blush of summer, too. Nice contrast to my working space, as you might note.”

“Yes,” Morse said. “It’s a bit cold in here, isn’t it? It’s a bit grim.” 

“Hmmmmmm,” Dr. DeBryn agreed, as he added a stitch. “So, Morse,” he asked, right at the moment the stitch was pulled through, “Do you fish?”

 

Morse’s nostrils flared a bit, but he otherwise remained still.

 

“No, not really. I like punting though.”

“Quite the thing up at the colleges, is it?” Dr. DeBryn asked.

“I suppose,” Morse said. “You’re good at this, you know.”  

DeBryn huffed a gentle laugh. “I did go to medical school, Morse. Not much more difficult than darning a sock, when it comes to it.” 

“No. I mean. At keeping people distracted,” Morse corrected.

“Ah,” DeBryn noted. “Well, it’s not often I get a living patient on which to practice my bedside manner.”

“What?” Morse asked, the confusion clear on his face.

Thursday cleared his throat. “Dr. DeBryn’s one of our home office pathologists.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Morse turned pale and went absolutely still, as if he was turning inwards, as if he was taking himself off someplace else. It was eerie. It left Thursday with a dull ache to watch it.

*****

Morse sat at the wooden table under a tree, looking all about at the patrons assembled in the courtyard. It may have been, Thursday realized, the most people he had ever seen at once in years.

Thursday set two large tankards of dark ale on the table before them. Wouldn’t hurt to build the lad up a bit.

But Morse looked bemusedly at the glasses and held up a hand. “I don’t drink,” he said.

“Very commendable. Now get that down you,” Thursday said.

Morse raised his eyebrows at the terseness of the command. Slowly, he lifted the glass, took a careful sip, and then pulled it back, looking at it thoughtfully, appreciatively. Thursday had to repress a chuckle at the sight of him sitting there, looking gobsmacked, with a small bit of foam clinging to his upper lip.

Thursday pulled out the two sandwiches from his pocket. “Let’s see what we have for today, shall we?”

He unwrapped one of the sandwiches and took a peek between the slices of bread.  “Ham and tomato,” he proclaimed.

He tossed the other to Morse, who looked at it for a moment before unwrapping it and taking a tentative bite.  

Thursday settled himself further back into his chair and pulled the newspaper out of his back pocket, unfurling across the table.

Morse seemed almost to recoil from it. He looked up, then, noticing Thursday had seen his reaction.

“I was surprised. You know. That it’s 1965,” he said.

“I know,” Thursday said quietly.

 Morse looked uncertain for a moment. “He used to give me the paper, when I was first there.”

Morse must have read the questioning look on Thursday’s face, because he added, “So I could see. That there was no mention of me in it. That no one was looking for me. That was part of the reason I had been selected for the assignment. I could disappear and no one would notice, he told me.”

He took another draught of ale and murmured. “Jakes was right, I suppose.”  

“It’s easy for him to say, lad,” Thursday said. “What you could or couldn’t have done. The thing to do is not to dwell on it. You’ve got a whole wide future ahead, you know.”  

More looked at him, unconvinced.

“I’ve lived a good many years,” Thursday said. “You can trust me. When I first came back from the war, I dreamt of it every night. I would close my eyes and see it. In the night, in the depths of the silence, I would hear the shots, the shouts echoing in my ears.”

Morse remained absolutely still, looking down into his ale, but Thursday knew he was listening.  

“And then one day passed. And then another. And those years all receded, like trees in the rear-view mirror of a car. You’ll see. One day, an evening will come in which you suddenly realize, you’ve passed through the day and haven’t given those years a thought,” Thursday said.  

“I don’t know if that’s so,” Morse said softly. “I wish that were so, but . . .”

“Did you think of looking up your friend Tony?” Thursday asked. “He gave me his number to pass on to you. He seemed keen to catch up.”

Morse snorted softly. “And say what?”

“He seemed discreet. Didn’t seem that he would push. I think he’s afraid of you.”

“Why?” Morse asked.

“He thinks you never answered his letters because you were offended that he ‘denigrated your records,’” Thursday said.

Morse smiled into his ale. “He did. But he was right, I suppose. I don’t know why now that all seemed to be the end of the world.” He sighed then, and took another sip.

Thursday frowned; no point in getting despondent about that other business now.

“Joan and Sam are going off to the fair tomorrow night. You might want to go with them,” Thursday suggested.

“A _fair_!” Morse repeated, incredulously. “What would I do there? That’s a bit frivolous, surely.”

“A little frivolity never hurts.  It’s a place to start anyway.”

But Morse only shook his head, as if such an idea was anathema.

“Have you thought about what you might want to do?” Thursday asked. “Not just now. But, in the future?”

“Yes,” Morse began. “I thought maybe I . . . I thought maybe I could be a police officer,” Morse said. “Like you.”

Thursday laughed.

“What’s wrong with that?” Morse asked. 

“Nothing, lad. There are just so many other things you could do. What? With a mind like yours?”  

“I can’t think of anything more important,” Morse countered.

So the lad was serious, then. Well, fair enough.

“Why is that then?” Thursday asked.

“I don’t know,” Morse said.  “I mean. You help people. Help to keep people safe. To help them _feel_ safe. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” Thursday intoned. “Not a thing.”

 

And he actually could see it. With him steering the lad along, Morse could easily make his way onto the force. What was the difference, really, between the mathematical puzzles he’d been working on and the components of a case? And he could stay with he and Win until he got onto his feet.

 Of, course, there was the hurdle that he had no records of the past five years. Perhaps Mr. Bright might help, on that score?

But, he couldn’t help but wonder, even as he was planning on how he might take Morse under his wing: Weren’t there people out there, somewhere, wondering where he was, what had become of him?

 

“Your records at the colleges said you had family in Lincolnshire,” Thursday said gently.

“ _Do_ I still have family in Lincolnshire?” Morse asked. “I don’t know.”

“Would you like me to look them up for you? It’s your father and stepmother, is it?” Thursday asked.

Morse looked up sharply.  

“Anthony Donn had mentioned them,” Thursday explained.

Morse sighed. “I don’t really even want to know. If he’s dead, then it’s too late to ever have made anything better. And if he’s alive, then.....,” Morse shrugged. He lifted the ale and took a long draught, his eyes drifting closed as he did so.

Then, he set the glass down and said, “And if he’s alive then. . . well, it’s too late to ever make things better, too, isn’t it? I don’t know which is worse—to find out he’s dead or to find out he’s alive and that he cared that little.”

Morse looked up at him, imploringly. “I did try you know. I jumped through all sorts of hoops, trying to get them to like me. It wasn’t as if I . . .  deliberately tried to annoy them. Everything I did seemed only to make them hate me more.”

 

What was this? Why should a twelve-year-old feel he has to jump through hoops for a little bit of kindness?

 

Morse picked the glass tankard up and drained the dregs of the glass at one go.

Thursday felt a slight twinge at that—he thought an ale would steady his nerves a bit, but Morse was draining the glass as if he wanted nothing more than to render himself completely numb.

He set the empty glass back on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Finish your crusts,” Thursday said.  

Morse stuffed the last bit of bread into his mouth and chewed doggedly. Then he brushed the crumbs off his lap. “All right,” he said. “I’m ready. I’m ready to get back to work.”

 

A crease formed between Thursday’s brows. He thought Morse had understood.

“I’m sorry. I can’t take you back there, lad.”

Morse’s impossilbly blue eyes widened at that. “What?” he cried.

“It’s a conflict. We can’t have our experts destroying evidence.”

“But that wasn’t evidence. I had every right to tear that up. It was....”

“What?” Thursday prompted.

“It was about . . . . It was about me,” Morse said.

“Well, there you go,” Thursday said. “It’s a conflict of interest, then.”  

 “But you don’t understand. All those years. Jakes was right. I never asked any more. I never asked. How is it that I never asked?”

 

Thursday’s face remained impassive. Morse didn’t seem to realize that the more he pled, the more Thursday considered it to be for the best that he had naught to do with any of it, that he begin the long process of putting it all behind him.

 “How will I ever know, now? This is my chance to make sense of it,” Morse said.

“I’m sorry, lad,” Thursday said.  

“Please, you can’t . . . You have to give me another chance!”

“Morse.”  

He leapt, then, up out of his chair. “Please,” he said. “Please. You have to let me try.”

Morse stopped then, aware suddenly of the stares directed their way, and sank back down into his seat.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, lad,” Thursday intoned.  

“That’s right,” Morse snapped. “I’m supposed to trip along off to the fair, act as if none of this happened.”

Thusday shook his head, and stood to get up.  

“Please,” Morse said. “You don’t understand. I have to finish that.”

“Finish _what_?” Thursday asked. It seemed as if he didn’t understand the larger picture of it any better than Professor Knight did. At least the elderly don managed to go through the papers without taking a kick at his sergeant.

“It’s time to forget Morse,” Thursday said. “It  _is_ finished. It’s over.”

 

And then it struck Thursday, what a mistake it was, even thinking to allow the lad to go through those papers; he realized, then, that the best course of action would be to separate Morse from all of it—from the papers, the notebooks, even the statements and the line ups, as soon as he could.

Morse was 26 years old. But, emotionally, socially, he was not much more than a teenager. What experiences had he had, what chances had he to grow and mature, locked in a room with mathematical problems, without a soul to speak to?

 

“Please, you . . . “ Morse began. But then his eyes traced quickly over Thursday’s face, and, suddenly, he seemed to understand he was asking for the impossible. Suddenly, he seemed to sag.

 

“Well,” Morse said faintly. “Where do you think I should go?”

Thursday huffed a gentle laugh. “You’re going back home with me.”

“But why? If you won’t let me help, I’m no use to you. What’s the point of me?” Morse asked.

Thursday paused at that. There was something in his voice that reminded him of that photograph, the one in Anthony Donn’s photo album. Of that face full of uncertainty, brimful of both disappointment and hope. Of the differences between Endeavour Morse’s expression and that of the self-assured Morse Fox-Hudgens-Browne.

 

This tragedy didn’t start in 1960. No, it started far, far before that. And Thursday thought he knew exactly when.

 

“Well,” Thursday said “We’ll still need you to look through the mugshots. Maybe look at a few lineups. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes,” Morse said.

“Do you _mind_ staying with us?” Thursday asked. “What with the kids off, Win and I were thinking of renting a room to a student. Little extra cash towards retirement. Always promised Win I’d take her to Venice. Maybe you can help her to get our spare room straightened out. You can use it for now, and when you’re  . . . back on your feet, as it were . . . ready to move on, we’ll have it finally done up. How’s that sound now, eh?”

“All right,” Morse said softly.

 

 

*******

Win seemed to have anticipated that they would not be gone long—she had spent the most time with him, after all, so perhaps she had known better than he what to expect

“Ah, there you are,” she said. “Just in time. My brother-in-law just dropped off one of my nephew’s old beds. And I’ve got the sewing room cleared out at last. I was wondering if you’d like to help me paint it.”

“I’m not supposed to move my arm,” Morse said glumly.

“You could use your right, same as you did in the garden,” Win suggested.

“I’m not particlulaly deft with my right. Are you sure you wouldn’t . . . Are you sure you wouldn’t mind if I tried?” Morse asked hopefully.

“Of course not!” Win said.

“All right, then. I’d like to help,” Morse said.  

“That’s the spirit. I’ve been wanting to do something with that room since we’ve moved in. Give it a redo.  Always seems as if everytime I have it cleared up, it’s piled up again with last Christmas’ wrapping paper and stacks of outgrown clothes.”

Win’s relentless enthusiasm gave Morse scarcely the chance to back out.

“Now, what color, is the question?” Win asked.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want you to spend a lot of money. If you’re only fixing it for me,” Morse said.

“I told you,” Win protested. “I’ve been wanting to fix it up for ages. You’ve just given us the motivation, that’s all.”

“I’ve quite a lot of paint out in the shed. Cans all hammered down tight. Should be fine with a good stir,” Thursday said.  

“There, there you are. Go out to the shed and take a look. Pick any color you like,” Win said.

“Are you sure?” Morse said. “It’s your house. I don’t want to choose something you don’t like.”  

“Don’t be silly, love. We must have liked it, if we bought it.”

Morse seemed to mull that over, and then he shrugged, as if he couldn’t argue with that. Then he turned and went out through the door.  

 

“So how did it go, then?” Win asked, as soon as he was outside.

“Fairly abysmally. Ended up in a brawl with my sergeant,” Thursday reported.  

“Is that how he tore at his stitches, then?  I should tell him to change that shirt, so I can give it a soak.”

“Yes,” Thursday said. “I asked Dr. DeBryn to make an emergency repair, spared him a trip back to hospital. He seemed a bit  . . . reluctant. . . to go back.”

“I would think so,” Win said. “Poor thing doesn’t know where he’s landing, does he?”

“Hmmmm,” Thursday agreed. Which brought him back to an earlier thought.

 

“Listen, there are a few inquiries I need to make. Will you . . . “Thursday began.

“We’ll be fine, love,” Win said. “Come home safe.”

********

Morse walked in through the back door, carrying a metal can.

“Is green all right?” he asked.

“That’s sounds fine. Brighten the room up a bit. There’s a tree right outside the window, too. Only good sized tree in the garden. It’ll look especially nice in summer, now that it’s in full leaf.”

Morse nodded and looked about the room.

“Where’s Inspector Thursday?” he asked.

“He had to go back out on inquiry, love.”

“Oh,” Morse said, looking uncertain.

“So, I’ll just show you where to get started, shall I?” she asked.

************************ 

Win thought that Morse might like a bit of company, so she helped him with the taping up. Soon, however, it seemed as if her presence was making him nervous. As he lined up each piece of tape, he glanced over his shoulder, as if looking toward her for confirmation that he’d done it correctly or else waiting for criticism.

“You know,” she said, “you’re doing such  a fine job all on your own— I’ll just pop downstairs and start getting a few things ready for tea, all right, then?” 

“All right,” he said.

 

As she worked in the kitchen, she kept an ear out, listening for small sounds from above. At one point, Win thought she heard Morse humming to himself, which she took as a good sign.

She was finishing slicing up some potatoes when he came downstairs and went back out to the shed. She wondered what he was doing, but he looked so eager, a faint flush of happiness across his face, that she hadn’t the heart to ask.

After his third trip down and back up the stairs, which he sounded to be taking almost two at a time, she couldn’t help but worry that he was possibly overdoing it.

 

“Would you like to take a break?” She called. “Have a cuppa? I was just getting one myself.”

“All right,” Morse said. “I’ll be right back down.”

She heard him rummaging about in the room, and then he came down the stairs at a quick trot, a definite burst of enthusiasm in his steps.  

He slid into his chair in the corner as Win set the tray down.

“Joan and Sam will be peppering you with questions, once they’re home,” Win said, pouring out the tea. “They’ve never been to the station.”

“Inspector Thursday said I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Morse said, matter-of-factly.  

“Oh, yes,” Win intoned, “The hat stand. But I’m sure you could tell them a little.” 

 

Kids were kids, and rules like that were made to be broken. Telling the tale would give Morse a chance to talk, to hold center stage for once; typically, he couldn’t seem to manage to get a word in when he was with Joan and Sam, and it would be nice to see him forming friendships with people closer to his own age.  

 

But Morse just took a sip of tea and looked at her doubtfully, as if she was filled with dangerous ideas.

Best to change the subject, then.

 

“Fred told me that your name is ‘Just Morse,’” Win said.

He smiled at that. “It is.”

Win laughed. “You must have some other name.”

“I do. I just don’t use it,” Morse said. He looked into his cup, thoughtfully, as if deliberating something.

“It’s,” he began... “It’s Endeavour. My name. My mother was a Quaker. It’s a virtue name.”

Win made a note of the ‘was.’ If his mother had passed, that might explain why no family had come forward.

“It’s a lovely name,” Win said.

He looked at her doubtfully.

“She must have been a lovely person,” Win said.

“She was. I don’t remember much about her now, though. Just the scent of her hair. Tenderness. A kindness. I don’t know.  Maybe Inspector Thursday is right. Maybe things do fade away in the end.”  

Win frowned at that. Some things, perhaps, but she wouldn’t want him to push all his memories away. If you cut off all of the bridge behind you, what do you have left to stand on?

 

He smiled shyly. “Well, I’d better finish,” he said. “Thanks for the tea.”

 

He went back upstairs and soon, he was humming to himself again. She still hadn’t foggiest idea what he had been up to, going back and forth out to the shed.

But, he had done such a fine job in the garden. It hadn’t looked better for years.  She ought to have a bit of faith in him. And she was sure that was just what he needed: someone to show confidence in him. He seemed so uncertain, as if he expected to be reprimanded at every turn.

 

Win finished washing a few things up in the kitchen and was just drying her hands on the tea towel when Morse wandered in, looking upset.

“Mrs. Thursday?” he asked.  

“Win, love,” she corrected.

And then, suddenly, it looked as if his eyes were welling up, and when he spoke, his voice was low and cracked.

“I didn’t mean to do all that,” he said. “I just. I don’t know. I can paint over it, once it’s dry.”

“Oh?” Win said, surprised. “But I’m sure you’ve done fine, Morse.”

“No,” Morse said. “No. I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“Well, let’s just see, then,” Win said, starting for the stairs.

Morse followed. “I didn’t. I.  I really am sorry,” he said, his voice shaking.

 

Win walked crisply down the upstairs hall and then came to a stop before the small room, inhaling a sharp intake of breath at the sight.

 

The room did not look so much like a garden, but like a dreamworld of a garden. Three different tones of blue wavered across the top, blended with swirls of white clouds, green shoots of grass shot up from the floor, and brown tree branches that were more like twisting vines flowing with green wended their way across the walls. Birds, their colors vibrantly off, were bold against the blue, diving and turning in midair.

Part of the oddness of it was due to the fact that some of the colors, such as those used for the birds, were slightly outside the norm—he’d been working with what they had left over in the shed, after all. But as she walked into the room, she felt as if she was leaving the workaday world behind, as if she was actually walking into a piece of art, as if she herself had temporarily become part of the painting.

 “It’s actually just. . .  lovely,”  Win said.

“Really?” Morse asked. “You don’t hate it?”

‘No,” Win said. “It’s beautiful.” 

“Are you sure? I could paint over it. It’s sort of. I mean. I am aware that was an odd thing to do,” he said stiffly.

She looked at him, and noticed that his right hand was covered in paint and a definite smudge of green had plastered itself across his nose.

“It looked like it was fun, at that,” she said.

He smiled. “Yes,” he said. ”Yes, it was fun.”

Then he looked dejected. “Not sure if it was much use to you. I don’t think ... I don’t think this was what you had in mind.”

 

Use again. Maybe it was best to change the subject; he had just smiled and admitted he had enjoyed the project—perhaps it might be best to leave it on that note.

 

“No, it’s been a great help. Certainly nicer then that jumble of boxes I had in here. And, listen, could you do me one more favor? I was just in the middle of making an apple crisp, and I’ve realized I’m out of eggs. I got the bowl just sitting here, butter and sugar ready to go, but I can’t leave my potatoes. They’re already at a boil. Do you think you can go to Richardson’s for me? It’s just two blocks over.”

Morse looked greatly cheered by this, pleased to be of help. “I know where it is,” he said. “We passed it when we were going to the station.”

“Thanks, love.”

*******

Thursday stood before the neat brick house and rang the bell. It wasn’t long before a grim-looking, middle-aged woman answered the door.

“Fred Thursday, Oxford City Police. I’m here to ask about Endeavour Morse. Do you know him?”

“That’s Cyril’s boy,” the woman said tersely. She turned to go back into the house, without inviting him in, but Thursday decided to take the open door as a standing invitation, and followed her down the hall.

“Cyril,” she said, coming into a room where an older man sat in an armchair.  "Sounds like the boy’s got himself into some sort of trouble with the police." 

"What’s this?" the man asked, half sitting up. 

"Detective Inspector Fred Thursday," Thursday said, flashing his warrant card. "Oxford City Police."

“Oxford? No point in coming round here asking about Endeavour. I’ve not seen him in five years. Ran off and joined the army, didn’t he?” the man said.

“You haven’t heard from your son in five years?” Thursday clarified.

“No. But that’s fine. We weren’t close. He always was his mother’s boy. Besides, he knows where I am, if he’d like to get in touch. Doesn’t make much difference to me, one way or the other. If he’s in trouble, don’t come around to me. I know nothing about it.”

 

It rankled Thursday that, rather than showing any concern for Morse at the moment a police officer showed up at his door, the man’s first thought was how Thursday’s presence might disrupt his life. 

 

“He’s not in trouble. He’s helping me,” Thursday said.

“What? Is he, what then? Joining the police?” the man asked, incredulously. Then he shook his head. “I never liked the police,” he muttered.

 

Thursday had the impression the man would have said that about anything pertaining to Morse. What a tiresome old bastard.  

 

“If you know where he is, you might take him some of his things. His old trunk is still up there, taking up space. I’m using that room to store some lumber,” the man suggested.

“Yes,” Thursday said. “I’ll just do that.”

 

It was no wonder Morse felt there was no one they could call for him when he was in hospital. It must have been difficult, coming to the final conclusion, but Morse had the measure of the man through and through. 

The grim woman—whom Thursday took to be Gwen—not that she had bothered to introduce herself—led him to a simple room that looked more like a guest room than a boy’s room. And maybe, that had been just what Morse was—an unwelcome guest in his own home.

 

When Morse moved here from his mother’s, he was coming to stay, not coming to live. Just as he had eventually come to stay at Clive Durrell’s.

 

And now, the room was filled with planks of lumber. Not exactly a welcoming place, not a place that would give a fledgling child the feeling he has a place to land, should the need arise. Thursday wondered if the man started storing things up here the second Morse had left for Oxford.

 

What the man was using the lumber for, Thursday couldn’t imagine. Didn’t exactly look the type to fix things around the house.

“There’s his things, there,” the woman said, gesturing to a corner of the room.  

There was a trunk with the initials EM embossed over the latch. It must certainly be from his mother, if she was the one who most often used his name. And on top of the trunk, was a small, red box record player.

Thursday lifted the record player so that he could open the trunk; inside, he found  a garment bag containing an evening suit, a pile of record albums, and a photo album, a soft green one that matched the one Anthony Donn had showed him, with OX X in pink marker on the front.  He flipped it open and read the inscription inside. “Happy Christmas, Pagan! Love, Kay and Pippa. 1958. xxxxx”

He tossed it back inside and prepared to haul the lot of it out to the car.

******

When he came through the door, Thursday knew something was wrong right away. Win was waiting, right inside the door, looking worried.

“Oh, I was hoping you were Morse,” she said.

“Where is he?” Thursday asked.

“He just ran up to Richardson’s for me, for some eggs. But it’s been an hour, now, and he hasn’t come back,” Win said. “I’ve been afraid to leave in case he comes back here and I miss him.”

Thursday leaned back out the door and looked up and down the sidewalk, but there was no trace of Morse to be seen.

 

And Thursday felt it then, a distinct chill: he couldn’t help but wonder if somewhere along this stretch of sidewalk, Morse had disappeared, just as he had five years ago. 

Morse had been unhappy, he knew, with his decision to keep him as separate from the case as he could. But he had thought that he understood that it was for his own good.

It hurt to think that the lad would leave. But as much as it hurt to think that Morse did not want to stay with them, he hoped, still, that the lad had chosen to go of his own free will.

Thursday didn’t think he could bear to consider the alternative.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, dear! I didn’t realize until I posted how long that chapter was... I hope that wasn’t too slow of a set up! The case really will start rolling next chapter!


	5. Chapter 5

Thursday looked down the long stretch of sidewalk, a sinking feeling settling somewhere in his gut. The only thing to do was to treat this as any other inquiry, he told himself. No better substitute than pounding the pavement.

 

“I’ll just go down to Richardson’s, have a look-see,” Thursday said.

 

Win nodded. “All right, love. Maybe he just ran into an old friend,” she said, hopefully. “He must know a lot of people in Oxford, from when he was at the colleges.”

That was certainly one possibility, Thursday supposed. Although it did seem unlikely, considering the set the lad had run with when he was up. He very much doubted Lord Marston or Lord Belborough or any of that crowd would be moseying around their neighborhood, popping into Richardson’s for a bottle of milk and a jar of marmalade.

But it might be something along those lines.

 

There was no need to panic yet. Because the first thought that had seized him, the thought that the unknown gunman might have somehow learned that he had left a surviving witness—and that he had somehow caught up with Morse—seemed equally unlikely.

 

For there had been no need to press Morse for more details as he gave his statement earlier that day; Thursday felt he had a fairly good handle on what had happened that night as it was. All the pieces fit together in such a way that he could almost see the events of that blood-splattered night unfold, right before his eyes.

Thursday remembered how he had stood at the desk in the corner while Dr. DeBryn crouched in the doorway, where the bodies of two students lay together in a tumble.  Dr. DeBryn had checked the one and then gently rolled it off of the other. The doctor had paused then, frowning slightly to himself, and reached to check the second student’s pulse.

 

And Morse’s eyes had flown open in shock at the touch of his hand.

 

Morse was right: The gunman hadn’t seen him there in the doorway. He was silent. He was a shadow.

 

_“Come for our shadow, have you?” the nurse asked._

 

Morse was hit by a bullet that was shot out into the crowd, and, when the other student collapsed on top of him in a bloodied heap, he went still, perhaps had even passed out.

The fact was there in those stretches of silences: in how Morse had frozen up at the mortuary, staring blankly at the metal sink as DeBryn repaired his stiches, in how faint he had looked when he learned that DeBryn was a pathologist, in how he had turned away, pale and shaky, when the nurse had removed the IV from the back of his hand. The lad was as squeamish as they come.

What would Morse have done if a body— bloodied and torn, riddled with bullet holes—had completely collapsed backwards on top of him, just as he was struck by a bullet that went out over the fallen man’s shoulder? He would have gone completely still, took himself away somewhere, just as he had as he sat on the mortuary table.  

And then the gunman had left, never having seen his tenth victim but for the darkness and the debris of shattered glass and toppled furniture and the papers drifting like forlorn snowflakes over nine bodies.

 

No, Thursday felt certain they were safe on that score.

 

Or was it that wishing might make it so?

 

Thursday walked briskly on, his eyes scanning the sidewalk under the shadowed brim of his hat, for any sign—a dropped bit of paper, or a coin, or a button.

Could it be that the lad had simply left? Was he angry, feeling stilted by the fact that Thursday had sent him away from the station, away from the avalanches of paper he seemed to be so invested in?

Perhaps he had gone off somewhere? To Anthony Donn’s house on Lake Silence? Or perhaps he had even gone back to his parents, perhaps they had just missed one another in passing.  As melancholy as Morse had sounded on the subject of his father, he had to be curious as to whether or not the man was still alive. Might it be he had some sort of unfinished business he felt needed to be resolved?

 

Thursday’s thoughts took him, almost without him noticing, right up to the heavy glass doors of Richardson’s.  He pushed the door open and went inside, walking about the front of the store, scanning the aisles for Morse.

A new thought struck him, then: When was the last time Morse had been in such a public place? Perhaps he had just been dazed by the people, the gleaming lino floors, the shelves of stacked bright bottles and boxes and cans. He loved the out-of-doors; might be shuffling around in the produce aisle, breathing in the scent of cantaloupes and strawberries?

 

At the far end of the store, a young man with a buzz cut and a shaving rash across his chin stood slouched over by one of the cash registers.

“Excuse me,” Thursday said, approaching him.  “I’m looking for my nephew. He’s about mid-twenties, auburn, wavy hair, blue eyes—have you seen him?”

The young man looked at him sullenly. “Oh. Him. Yeah. He was here. Asked to speak to the manger.”

 

The manager?

What trouble could Morse have gotten into just picking up a dozen eggs?

 

“Well, might I speak to him?” Thursday prompted, pointedly.

“Yeah,” the young man said. He turned and called over his shoulder. “Hey, Da! A gentleman out here wants to talk to you.”

“Coming,” answered a voice from a small office at the front of the store. And, in the next moment, a man emerged from around the open door—a small man with a shiny face and a balding pate framed with longish, dark hair combed over it.

 

“This gent wants to speak to you,” the young man explained, jerking his head to Thursday.

“Ah. Charlie Anderson,” the manager said, offering his hand.

“Fred Thursday,” Thursday replied.

“So. How might I be of service?” the man asked obsequiously.   

“Well,” Thursday said, “the thing of it is, I’m looking for my nephew. He was in here earlier. Asked to speak to you, I believe? Auburn hair? Blue eyes?”   

The man put on an affronted face. “Oh. Yes, he did. Told me my signs weren’t grammatical.”

“What’s this?” Thursday asked.

“He told me I needed to learn how to use an apostrophe correctly. I ask you. They are supermarket signs. Made of scraps of cardboard. Up today, in the bin tomorrow. They’re hardly meant to be _War and Peace_. Who spends their time scrutinizing supermarket signs?”

The man shook his head in disgust.  

“I told him—‘It’s naught to you. What? Are you a bloody literary critic?’ And then _he_ said . . .” and here Charile Anderson put on a pompous little air, “‘Since this is an establishment that sells perishables, you would think you might have an interest in instilling some confidence in your customers. If you’re incompetent in one department, you most certainly must be incompetent in another.  No one wants to buy spoilt milk from a cut-rate market.’”

 

It seemed like a lot of words coming from Morse. But somehow, Thursday knew that it must be him. He had suspected from that first day in the hospital that Morse would be the sort to talk in turns: quiet for the most part, but once he got the ball rolling, he’d have a lot to say.

“Did he buy anything, do you know?” he asked the young man at the register.

“Yeah,” he replied.  

“Well, what did he buy?” Thursday asked.  

“Some eggs, I think.”  

Thursday nodded and settled his hat on his head. “Thank you for your time,” he said. And then he returned out to the light of the sidewalk.

 

Morse hardly would have bought the eggs if he had been planning to go gadding about town. This detour, then, had been unplanned on his part.

Thursday couldn’t help but wonder: Mr. Bright would have informed Special Branch by now about the coding device, about Morse. He would have called them, most likely, as soon as they were out the door to Dr. DeBryn’s.

Thursday had anticipated that they would want to talk to Morse. But they wouldn’t swoop down on him right on the street, would they? They wouldn’t do such a thing to someone who had suffered what Morse had in the past, surely.

But then, where the hell could he be?

****

“Did you find him, Fred?” Win asked, as soon as he came in the door.  Joan and Sam were home, too, now, and were not far behind her, looking curiously over his shoulder, as if expecting to find that he had Morse in tow.  

“The man at the market saw him. Said he came in to buy the eggs,” Thursday supplied.

“But then,” Win said uncertainly, “he must not have meant to have left. He must have been planning to come back. What could have happened to him? Could . . .” She began to say more, but then she cast a look toward Joan and Sam, with whom they hadn't shared all of the details.

 

“I shouldn’t have let him go,” she said, instead. “This is my fault.”

 

Thursday shook his head. “We’ve done everything right, Win, what with keeping the cover. He should be allowed two blocks down the road,” Thursday countered. “Or else he’s still  . . .”  He let the words fall, knowing that Win would know what he meant.

 

“He was just so sad about the room,” Win explained. “I hated to see him so dejected, right when he had looked so happy. He so wants to feel of use, I can tell. He hates feeling he’s living on some sort of charity."

 

She paused, as if considering something.

 

“You don’t suppose that that’s why he left, do you?” she asked. “Do you suppose he thinks we’re upset about the room?”

“The room?” Thursday asked. “What about the room?”

“He painted it. I thought he might be up to something, because he kept trailing back and forth out to the shed. But he was smiling and even humming to himself—and I had never heard him do that, making sounds just to make them. He’d always been so silent. He was so happy, I didn’t want to interfere. So I just left him to it,” Win said.

“So, what was he doing? Going out to the shed? Do you know?” Thursday asked.

Win smiled. “He was getting other colors. He painted the room to . . . . well . . . to look like a garden.”

Thursday laughed. “What’s this?”

“Like a garden. And he seemed so pleased with what he was doing. He came and took a break with me, had a cup of tea. And then he went right back to work. But then, after another hour or so, he came into the kitchen, looking absolutely heartbroken. ‘I do realize it was an odd thing to do,’ is what he said.”

 

Thursday frowned. Like a garden? An odd thing to do? This, he needed to see to understand.

 

He went up the steps and round the corner, past Sam’s room, to Win’s old sewing room.

And then his breath was nearly knocked from his body.

 

“What the ... ?” Thursday muttered.

 

It was positively surreal—On the walls, impossibly sheer clouds swirled amidst blended hues of blue, while flying birds of all colors dove and spun. Green grass brushstrokes grew up out of the floor, painted so that each of the blades appeared to move, as if the wind was passing right through them. The room was small, to be sure, but still: he must have been mad to have done all this in a few hours, he must have done it in some sort of frenzy.

 

And they had done everything wrong.

 

It had all been too much…. Morse had nothing for five years—only blank white walls and numbers. And then there was Sam and Joan’s quick words at the breakfast table, and the nick, and the beer garden. And then, as soon as he was in the door, they had launched him onto something else. They should have just sat him quietly in the den with his records when he got home, rather than starting him on a new project.

 

But Thursday had seen something there, when Win had asked him if he’d like to help her to paint. Something that had heartened him.

_“You wouldn’t mind? If I used my right hand?”_

It was a glimmer of rebellion. A wish to be what he was naturally meant to be, a wish to take back a small part of himself that had been stolen.

 

They could keep the lad in the house, tell the neighbors he was their nephew, try to look out for him the best they could. But Jakes, although he was an arse, had a point. Until the lad stood up for himself, there would be no way to keep him safe.

 

There would be no protecting him if he would not protect himself.

 

But it had all been too much, too soon. He was dizzy with the whirlwind of it all. It only took one look around the room to see the madness of it. Maybe he really wasn’t in his right mind. Maybe he wasn’t up to the two-block jaunt to Richardson’s. Maybe he was lost, wandering around Oxford, with wild visions just like the ones on these walls swirling though his head.

“It’s mad,” Thursday said.

Win frowned. “I think it’s lovely.”

“Lovely?” Thursday said, incredulously. “It’s mad.”

“Well, it’s perhaps a bit fanciful. But not mad.”

Thursday huffed a rueful laugh. “Is there a difference?

“Of course there is,” Win said.

 

Thursday shook his head. And, then, he went out to the middle of the room, to where the bed his brother-in-law had dropped by stood, well away from the drying walls.  And then he looked around until he began to feel as if he actually _was_ a part of some strange new world.

 

And, in a way, he supposed Win was right. It might be that the lad was suffering from some sort of disassociation from reality, but, nevertheless, Thursday’s first instinct, his copper’s instinct, had been spot on—he had not made a mistake in breaking his hat stand rule, in bringing the lad home.

The room might be a bit mad, yes, but what Win had said was also true--it was lovely. There nothing of the ugliness, of the violence, of the brutality of the world Thursday so often inhabited. In Morse’s world, the birds floated light as feathers, and the very wind blew gently through the grass, as if it would not see the slightest blade of it bruised or crushed.

 

 It was the world as it should have been.

 

Well . . . .  there was nothing else for it.

Morse was an idealist.

 

And that’s what had drawn him to the lad, despite their differences, despite all the long and awkward silences between them.

 

Thursday was a pragmatist. He liked to play by the rules, sure. And he knew they were there for a reason. But when reality didn’t match up to the ideal, he didn’t sit around wringing his hands over the fact.

He just used his fists to _make_ them match up.

 

But it had not always been so.

 

It was as if Morse represented some part of him that he had lost long ago, out in the desert. Some part he had decided that, going forward, he could not afford to keep.

And now, in the late afternoon, if not the twilight of his career, he longed for it, for that feeling he had left behind so long ago as he stood amidst bodies covered in blood and sand, where he had learned the true way of the world—That might makes right.

Even if he wished it wasn’t so.

 

And Morse was proof positive that, maybe, it wasn’t.

Clive Durrell might have wanted to force the lad into his own mold, to make Morse into some sort of human automaton, but he hadn’t succeeded. He might have robbed him of friendship and family, of love and language and freedom, of the sunrise and of the crunch of leaves beneath his feet. But he couldn’t take him away from himself. Morse kept a piece of that, locked away, hidden, until the day it was free to show itself.

Until Win left him with a few cans of paint and a room—and then with something else, with something Thursday realized he had not had in five years of solitary confinement.

 

And then she left him free to his own devices.

 

Thursday went back down the stairs to the phone in the den. There was no need to panic yet. He’d just call a few men on the duty roster to keep an eye out, a few of those men he knew he could trust.

****************

Morse sat in the back seat of the large, black car, wondering just how it was he had gotten there.

He had been walking along the sidewalk, back from Richardson’s, when a car slowed, keeping pace with him. When the man first called to him from the passenger seat, Morse didn’t know what to do.

He didn’t want to go with men, but every instinct he had told him that it was best not to make trouble, it was best to do as he was told.

But then, why should he? Why should he obey, simply because someone spoke to him with an air of command?

Earlier that day, at the station, Sergeant Jakes had told him to "put those papers down." But he had ignored him, he had taken them anyway, he had started to rip them to pieces, rip them to shreds.

And it was the most alive he had felt in years.

No. To hell with the men in the car. He’d run for it.

 

And then, the man in the passenger seat asked, “So, Morse, tell me, how do you like living with the Thursdays?”

And then, Morse stopped.

And then, it wasn’t a hard decision.

Because, what did that mean, exactly?  Was it simply a throwaway question?

Or was it a threat?

If the men in the car knew about the Thursdays, they would know where to find him, anyway. It was better to go with them here and now, then to risk them following him back to the Thursdays' house and looking for him there— then to risk involving the family who had taken him in when he had had no one, nowhere to go.

 

And so, when the man told him to get in the back of the car, Morse did.

 

He wasn’t afraid of the men sitting in the front seat. They weren’t particularly physically threatening—neither of them had that other man’s imposing build, nor were their expressions redolent with his odd, obsessive, frightening intensity.

They were built on the slighter side, in fact—they weren’t any larger than he was. And their faces were safely, blandly smug; they were just the sort of aggressively pleasant fellows one so often found among men of their class, right down to their affected drawls and their soft and well-manicured hands. They reminded Morse not so much of that man, but of the sons of Tony’s father’s friends, those supercilious young men with whom he and Tony had been forced to make small talk, while their fathers went off to the study to discuss business with Tony’s.

 

The driver signaled and made a right.

Morse looked in the rearview mirror, and his own reflection looked back at him.

And he could see at once from his face that—no—he was not afraid.

 

It wasn’t because of the look in his eyes, although there was that. It was in the dab of green paint that lingered across the bridge of his nose.

He had known freedom, if only for a few hours. Whatever might come next, he was ready, he was steeled for it. He had had one final taste of life and even happiness before the end.

 

It was more than he had ever expected.  

 

Yet, he was sad at the thought that he might never see the Thursdays again. They had given him such a lot in such a little space of time—it seemed unfair that he might not even get the chance to thank them, especially Mrs. Thursday, who seemed to know the truth of the matter without him having to say it.

It would make sense, of course, to think, that after being at that man’s for so long, he would be eager for company. But, as she had helped him to prepare the room for painting, it was as if Mrs. Thursday had finally understood.

 

There is something worse than being alone for five years.

And that is never being alone for five years.

 

For years—and it was years—five years, though it seemed impossible—Morse had lived with a shadow of a threat just beyond the soundproof door. Even when the man was gone, the threat of him was there, hanging in the still, breezeless air, and with the threat, the fear—the fear that travelled in two directions—the fear that he _would_ come back—and thus Morse’s unbearable life would grind on without end— against the fear that he _wouldn’t_ —and Morse would be left to starve in a white room that would become his coffin.

For five years, every move he made had been watched and scrutinized, measured and monitored—right down to the shaving mirror and razor brought into him so he might shave under the man’s watchful eye.

And there was something twisted about that, something not right from the first. Shaving is such an intimate thing—just you and your reflection in the quiet of the morning—it’s a time to think about what happened the day before, a time to think about the day ahead.

But now he shaved while the bulk of the man shadowed the door, and it was all for his own good, the man said, soldiers have been driven to madness in a posting like this.

It was all for his sake, he said, lest Morse find the temptation to escape through means of a razor or a shard of glass too much to resist.

 

It was absurd: he might as well have grown a beard like Robinson Crusoe, for all that it mattered. Who saw him anyway? But no, a beard was not “regulation.”  And it’s not true and it can’t be true.

In those early days, when the man still spoke to him, he carried it as a mantra in his head. It’s not true. It’s not true.

And then after?

After, he stopped questioning. After, there was no left room for words—only for the numbers that never worked themselves out satisfactorily. Some equations are impossible —and he had shouted as much sometime in that first week. And then there was a blow across his face before the words were out, knocking the words right out of him. And “Are you in need of a disciplinary, Morse?” And Morse said nothing, only shook his head.

And the man told him he was to stop speaking, and so he had stopped speaking because ... what was there to say? Any words he had would be knocked from him before they took flight, like birds turned to stones.

 Well.

Not anymore.

 

Morse leaned forward in the seat. “Where are we going?” he asked sharply.  

“If we told you that, we’d have to kill you,” said the driver, in a languid voice.

The man in the passenger seat chuckled appreciatively. Then he turned around, looking at Morse over the seat. “Although I daresay we might at least introduce ourselves. I’m Singleton. And this is Louis,” he said with a nod to the driver.

Then he went through an odd little pantomime of an in introduction. “Louis, Morse, Morse, Louis,” he said, nodding his head between the two of them. 

“Pleasure to meet you,” Louis said, meeting his eyes in the rear-view mirror.

Morse looked out the window and scowled. They seemed to be a pair of idiots, honestly.

“Now, no need to look like that. You like music, don’t you? We’re just three friends going to see a concert,” Singleton said.

“But we aren’t friends,” Morse said, sullenly.

The two men laughed at this. “No,” Singleton said. “And we’re not going to see a concert.”

********

It looked like a brick house like any other. And Morse felt a twinge of fear.

He remembered, on the night of the shooting, the revolving flash of the ambulance lights and the doctor with the soft and quiet voice, and he remembered a feeling almost as if he were floating, although now he realized he must have been on a gurney.

As he was floating, he had turned his head and found, to his shock, that it was a brick house, an ordinary brick house on a quiet tree-lined street. And it was strange that he had been inside it for such a long time, but he had never seen the outside. And it had been a simple brick house all along, and it had not been a government installation at all, and it was all a lie.

 

And now, here was another house that was, no doubt, not what it seemed.

 

Although, when he stepped inside, Morse was relieved to see it was filled with a reassuring number of people. As Singleton and Louis escorted him down the long hall, they passed drawing rooms and libraries filled with books, where small groups of men stood before fireplaces and smoked and chatted, filling the house with the low murmur of male voices.

They came to a room at the back of the house, filled with shelves of worn books, so that the whole room smelt of woodsmoke and old paper. A warm fire blazed on the hearth, keeping off the dampness.  A delicate model of a ship stood on the mantle, and etchings of birds hung on the deep, red walls. It was a perplexing place, but not a sinister one. And there were no locks or latches on the door.

 

Singleton and Louis took their places at a large round table, set as for a state dinner, with white china and silverware and lit tapered candles, and gestured for him to do the same. 

 

“Who are you?” Morse asked, sliding into a chair.   

 

Singleton widened his eyes alarmingly, as if urging him into silence, and Morse was just about to protest, when he heard a door creak open behind him. Morse turned, looking over his shoulder, to see an elderly server bringing in a cart laden with silver trays topped with rounded covers.

The men waited in silence, and Morse was given to understand that they did not want to speak in the presence of the wait staff. Morse kept his face blank, emulating theirs. If this was a private matter, fair enough. So long as it didn’t prove to be another raft full of lies. If there was one thing Morse had learned, it was to believe only the half of what he heard.

The elderly waiter was bent and stooped, and he seemed to take his time piling the silver trays onto the table—Morse wasn’t quite sure if it was because the old man simply couldn’t move any faster, or if he was deliberately drawing the task out, just to spite Singleton and Louis, who made it clear that they were impatient for him to leave.

 

The fact that the old man was smiling slightly to himself seemed to suggest the latter.

 

And then, the server did something that altogether surprised him.

He turned, so that he was looking straight at him.

 

And then, he winked at him.

 

Morse startled—not only was the gesture certainly unexpected, but there was something else incongruous about it. There was a youthful sparkle in his eye, not in keeping with the man’s ancient and lined face, and a sauciness in his expression that did not suit his age and dignity.

And, what’s more, Morse could not escape the feeling that, in the moment their eyes met, some secret intelligence had passed between them—it was as if the man had said to him, “Yes, I agree, they are a pair of idiots, but we just have to work with them, don’t we?”

Morse looked at the man in wonder, until he realized he was looking too long, until the server shook his head slightly to dissuade him, and hurried about his task.  

 

Even after the old man left, closing the heavy floor firmly behind him, Morse felt the reassurance of his presence. This was not like that other time. He was not alone here. He didn’t have to accept this.

 

“You’ve got about thirty seconds to tell me exactly who you are and what you want,” Morse snapped. “Or I’m leaving.”  

Singleton nodded, as if that was fair enough. “We’re wardens in Ordinary attached to St. Peter ad Vinicula.”

“St Peter in Chains?” Morse asked. “That’s a chapel in the Tower. Thomas More is buried there.”

“Oh, yes,” Louis agreed.  “Thomas Cromwell. Anne Bolyen. Lady Jane Gray. The lopped heads of Olde England.” He looked at him then, his face growing solemn, and he added, pointedly, “Traitors all.”

“If you know that much,” Singleton said, “you know it’s a Royal Peculiar.”

“So . . . you answer only to the crown?” Morse asked.

“That’s right,” Singleton confirmed.

“So what do you want?” Morse asked.

“Do you love your county?” Singleton asked.

Morse huffed a rueful laugh. “Do you still beat your wife?”

Singleton grimaced. “The simple fact of the matter, is, we want your help. And, it could be argued, you _owe_ us your help.”

“Help with what?” Morse asked bluntly.

“You should take a look at Sebastian Fenix,” Louis said.

“Who is that?” Morse asked.

“You’ve never heard of him?" Louis said silkily. "Where have you been the last five years?”

And then they chortled, amused at their own little joke.

 

Morse felt the blood drain from his face. They knew. They had to know.

 

They were still laughing as they lifted the covers from the platters and began serving themselves. It was unbelievable. They behaved just as if this were a regular dinner and not the Mad Hatter’s tea party. For that’s just what it seemed— the pair of them, chiming in at the end of one another’s words, finishing one another’s sentences, suddenly made Morse think of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The server, with his forward wink, was the Cheshire Cat, and he, himself, was Alice, wondering if he’d ever get out of this strange place, wondering if he’d ever find his way home again.

 

Singleton nodded for him to serve himself, but Morse had no intention of sitting and eating with them, as if they were old friends. And after all, who knew? Any of this food might render him too large to pass back out through the door. 

 

Singleton shrugged, as if it were of no matter to him. “Sebastian Fenix,” he explained, placing some potted shrimp onto his plate, “is a perfumier.”

“A world famous multi-millionaire perfumier, playboy and philanthropist,” Louis corrected.

 

“What’s he to do with me?” Morse asked. “Why should I _‘take a look_ ’ at Sebastian Fenix?”

“He has some things we might be interested in,” Singleton said.

“Why me?” Morse asked. “Why don’t you go look for yourself?”

“Well, the answer to that is simple: You know what you’re looking for, don’t you?” Louis said.

 

Before Morse could protest that they were using one question to answer another, Singleton leaned forward and said, “Fenix has a factory, north of Oxford. Why don’t you take a tour, get to know the place? And from there, I’m sure you can puzzle something out. We’d be very interested in anything you might pick up. Particularly anything about any interesting papers you might come across in Fenix’s study.”

“Or,” Louis piped in, “Any information about anything being made in Laboratory 4.”

“Why?” Morse asked. “Why should I help you?”

 

Louis and Singleton exchanged glances. And then Singleton pulled out a file and placed it on the table, flipping it open as he laid it in front of his plate.

Morse inhaled a sharp intake of breath. Inside the file, attached with a paper clip, was his own photo, the photograph they had taken in the recruiting office for his military identification card.

 

“How would you like,” Louis asked, “An honorable discharge?”

“What?” Morse asked blankly.

“It might be awfully difficult, I would think, starting a new life with no records of the past five years,” Singleton said. “So here you are. A past ready-made, all done up with a bow. You were stationed overseas.”

“Signal Corps,” Louis added. “The Golf, Chess and Cheese society. It looks like you’ve quite the resume. Earned a few medals, I see.”

“A highly accessible, even impressive past,” Singleton said. “One you can show to any employer. All we ask is for a little information in return.”

“I’m not a spy,” Morse said.

 

And again, they laughed.

 

“Aren’t you, though?” Louis asked.

“You’re Agent X,” Singleton said. 

 

“I’m what?” Morse asked, blankly.  

 

“We had our eye on Clive Durrell about three of four years ago," Singleton explained. "We suspected he was colluding with a Soviet agent. But it didn’t make sense. Once we uncovered a set of documents, it seemed it was impossible for it to have come from Durrell. . . for how could one man manage to come up with so much all on his own?”

“He must have help, surely, we thought,” Louis added. “But who? Who was Agent X? We had Durrell followed, we had him watched, we placed a few of his students under surveillance. Every lead we followed came up a dead end.”

 

Morse felt again as if the blood was draining from his face, as though his heart was beating in his throat.

 

“And then?” Morse asked.

 

“And then, no such agent could be found,” Singleton said.

 “The investigation came up a blank,” Louis said.

“It seemed our sources were mistaken,” Singleton agreed.

“We had Durrell tracked a few more months, checked all of his post,” Louis said.

"But, for all outward appearances, he seemed to live a blameless life," Singleton concluded. 

Louis shrugged. “And so Durrell eluded detection.”  

“Until a few nights ago, it seems,” Singleton countered.   

 

Morse looked at them, wide-eyed in disbelief. “Are you the ones who ordered all those people shot?” he asked.

“Of course not,” Singleton said, with a grimace of distaste. “The British government doesn’t go around mowing down students at academic club meetings.”

“But” Morse protested, “if you think that that man was working for the Soviets, perhaps it wasn’t an academic club meeting.”

“Ah. You said it, not us,” Louis said.  

“And if they were all working for the Soviets, who else would have killed them, then?” Morse cried. "If not you?" 

 

The two men exchanged glances.  

“ _You_ did,” Morse gasped. “You had all those people killed.”

 

Suddenly, Singleton’s amused look was gone. For the first time that evening, it seemed, he spoke completely in earnest. “No. That's not how we operate. Truly. The truth is, we don’t know who killed them. Or why. What you might find at Fenix might help us to uncover that, as well.”

“But you aren’t on that case,” Morse protested. “The Oxford City Police are handling that.”

 

They each made an odd face at that, as if he was terribly naïve. Morse didn’t like it.

 

“Why should I trust you?" Morse blurted. "You’re just like that man. You took me right off the sidewalk. What’s the difference between you?”  

“Ah, Louis said. “But the difference is this: after our very nice dinner, we’re going to drop you off right where we found you.”

“And, once we drop you off, we’ll be watching over you. And we’ll be watching the Thursdays, as well,” Singleton chimed in.

 

Morse stood up so abruptly that the table jolted, spilling a bit of wine so that it bled red onto the white tablecloth.

“Is that a threat?” he shouted.

“No,” Singleton said. “It’s a promise.”

“A solemn vow,” Louis chimed in.

 

And then they spoke as if in a chant, one sentence bouncing off the other, so that Morse felt as if he was watching a tennis match.

 

“Like we told you, we’re on the side of the angels.”

“Keepers of the secret flame."

“Guardians of the realm.”

“It’s we who you  _want_ watching over you and the Thursdays.”

“Because whoever killed Clive Durrell and the members of his cell  . . .”

 . . . Is still out there  . . .”  

“And he might be watching, too.”

 

Then they began working away at their dinners in earnest, leaving Morse to stand, staring at them in disbelief, his heart hammering in his chest.

“I bare grave news,” Louis said, setting down his fork. “The chicken pie is off.”

Singleton raised his eyebrows. “I call that a very bad show,” he said.  

**********

Morse slowly turned a small circle on the sidewalk, trying to get his bearings. Then he saw the sign down the block—he was one street down from Richardson’s. He looked around then, for the large, black car. But it had gone, disappeared. It was as if it never happened. Maybe he had been dreaming. Maybe he’d wake up on the Thursday’s couch, or in that new guest room.

He took a deep breath to see if he could smell the scent of paint. Dreams couldn’t replicate scents, could they?

 

“Morse?”

Morse looked up. It was the sergeant from the station, the one with the heavy eyebrows and the sharp face, Sergeant Jakes, pulling up beside him in a black police car.

Morse ignored him and walked on.

 “Morse?”

He kept walking.

“Where the hell are you going?” the sergeant asked. “The guv’nor called us to keep an eye out for you.”

 

Morse felt his heart sink.  He had worried about that: somewhere along the years, he had lost the art of estimating the passage of time; he used to try marking slashes on the wall, but, in a world without clocks, a world without sunsets and sunrises, he soon gave up, leaving the marks only as reminders that such things as the sun and time existed.

But it was beginning to get dark. He wasn’t sure how long he had been gone, but surely it was longer than it might be expected to take to pick up a dozen eggs.

 

And. Oh, no.

 

He had left the eggs on the back seat of the car.

 

He wasn’t sure what it was, how he had managed to remain calm all through that car ride and all through the meeting with those men, but, suddenly, the realization that he hadn’t even managed to get the eggs he had been sent for left him feeling utterly despondent, as if he might burst into tears. He could feel it now, even, a prickling in the back of his throat and in the corners of his eyes.

Perhaps it was the delayed reaction—he had felt somehow removed from it all, resigned, as it was happening. But now that he was free again, now that it was over, he felt as if he was shaking.

 

“Are you all right?” Jakes asked. “Where the hell are you going?”

Morse shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m walking back to the Thursdays’ right now.”

“Well, why don’t you let me drive you?” Jakes asked.

“No,” Morse said. And it felt good to say it, too.  

“Why not?” Jakes asked. “It’ll be faster.”

“No,” Morse said again.  And he began to chant it then, softly under his breath, as if to try it out, to revel in how good it was to say. “No. No. No. No. No.”

“What the . . . .?” Jakes said. “Jesus.”

  

Morse was only dimly aware of the sergeant parking the car along the curb—for just then, his attention was diverted by the signs in the store window.

 

He had _told_ the manager they were all wrong, and, still, the man hadn’t bothered to come out and change them.

 

He was shaking his head in disbelief when Sergeant Jakes came up to join him.

“Look at this,” Morse said, outraged.

“Look at what?” Jakes said.

“Fresh tomato-apostrohpe-es,” Morse said, his voice dripping with contempt. “Why do they need the apostrophe? It’s a simple plural.”

“Yeah, so?” Jakes asked. He lit a cigarette in a flash of silver and took a long, thoughtful drag. “What does it matter?”

“It matters that it isn’t right,” Morse snapped.

Jakes shrugged. “Lots of things aren’t right. Doesn’t mean they don’t happen.”

“But I told them,” Morse said. “I told them it was wrong. And they still haven’t corrected it.”

Jakes laughed. “What the hell is it to you? What does it matter? It’s not as if anyone normal would notice some small thing like that, is it?”

 

Morse turned and looked at the sergeant incredulously. Then he continued on down the sidewalk.

 

“Hey! Hey!,” Jakes said. “Wait. I’ll walk you back.”

“I’m perfectly capable of walking back on my own. I hardly need a police escort to travel two blocks,” Morse said. And he had been followed enough for one day. And he wanted to be left alone.  

“Oh. You know where the Thursdays live, then?” Jakes asked.

“Of course, I know where the Thursdays live,” Morse replied.  

“Oh, all right. Just thought. You know. Maybe you had gotten lost. You not be used to being out and about,” Jakes said.

 

It was as if a rock had fallen on him, crashing into him from out of the sky. Because he knew, he knew, too, of course he knew. Just like Singleton and Louis.

How many people knew all of his secrets? How many people knew all about what had happened? Would anyone ever look at him the same way again? Little wonder the sergeant seemed to have such contempt for him.

 

But Morse could not afford to think of that now—because another thought had just occurred to him.

 

It was a delicate balance he would have to strike from here on out. He could not tell the Thursdays the truth. But he could not afford to lie to them, either.

 

Because, what if he were caught in the lie, and the Thursdays drove him away? If the man whom Singleton had eluded to, if the gunman who had killed that man ever _did_ come to look for him, what would happen if he followed his trail to the Thursdays’, and he wasn't there?  

If the gunman came and found him, Morse could go with him, he could give him what he wanted, whatever he could.

But what if he came looking, and Morse _wasn’t_ there? Would he believe the Thursdays, when they said he had gone? Or would he take out his disappointment, his anger, on them? Would he try to force them to give information about him, information they didn’t have?

 

He would be a danger to the Thursdays for as long as he stayed with them. But he’d be a greater danger to them if he ran. If he ran, how could he turn himself in, if the need arose?  

 

And so he’d have to lie to protect them. And tell the truth to protect them.

And both statements were true. And both statements could not be true.

 

It was just like something out of one of Gödel's theorems. His mind was reeling in circles, trying to make sense of it all. He didn't even realize that he had reached the Thursdays’ front stoop until Jakes knocked smartly on the door.

Why was the sergeant still following him?

Well, Jakes wanted to get credit for finding him, he supposed. And now he’d be returned, like a cat found in a neighbor’s garden or like a forgotten library book left on the bus. 

 

And it would be utterly humiliating.

 

In a moment, Inspector Thursday opened the front door.

“Think I found something of yours,” Jakes said.  

“Where did you find him?” Thursday asked.  

 

Yes. It was completely humiliating.

 

“Out in front of Richardson’s. Just walking along,” Jakes said.

Thursday frowned and turned to him. “Where were you, lad?” he asked.

And Morse had not been expecting this question straight off—and how could he answer? He could not tell the truth and he couldn’t lie, either.

Morse kept his eyes lowered and shrugged.

Just then, Mrs. Thursday came bustling up to the door. “There you are, love,” she said. “Didn’t you give us quite a turn?”

“Sorry,” Morse said.

She held the door open wider, beckoning him and Jakes inside. They all followed her into the hall, and suddenly, the place felt claustrophobic, with the four of them gathered in the narrow space; he wasn’t sure were to stand, everywhere he turned, he felt he might run into a hat hook or Jakes’ outthrust elbow.

 

“Well, where were you?” she asked.

“I . . . I ran into someone,” Morse said, “while I was getting the eggs.”

“Oh?” Mrs. Thursday asked. “Where are they?”

Morse felt a shudder of fear, and he looked over his shoulder, back towards the door. Who was watching? Were they all watching?  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know where they went.”

 

Thursday’s scowl deepened. “She meant the eggs, Morse,” he said shrewdly.

“What?” Morse asked.

“The eggs,” Thursday repeated.  

 

He left them on the back seat of the car. It was awful. He could do nothing right and he was useless and there was no point to him and the only thing he had ever been good at, he had never understood and . . .

 

“I lost them,” Morse said.

Thursday snorted at that, gave a small huff of a rueful laugh. “Well, I hope someone finds them." 

And it _was_ wasteful of him, stupid. He was taking the food right out of Joan and Sam’s mouths, just as he once had out of Joycie’s. He was a cuckoo in a nest of robins.

 

“I’m sorry,” Morse said, miserably. “I wish I could find them, but I don’t think . . .”

Thursday chuckled. “I’m not fussed about the eggs, Morse. I simply mean, if you left them somewhere where no one finds them, they’re likely to start making their presence known in the worst possible way after a week or so.”

“Oh,” Morse said.

 

Well, who knew. Perhaps he had had some small measure of revenge on Singleton and Louis after all. He could see them now, driving along, sniffing carefully at the air.

“I say, what is that detestable smell?”

 

Just then, Joan came out from the back of the house and into the hall, too. And how long would they be standing there? It was getting far too crowded.

 

“Hello, you,” Joan said to him.  “And hello, you,” she added to Jakes.

To Morse’s surprise, the sergeant looked a bit flustered under Joan’s gaze, and his hand leapt up to smooth back his hair.

 

Joan turned to Morse. “C’mon. You can help me out. Mum’s been holding tea.” Then she turned to Jakes. “Would you like to stay to tea?”

“That’s right, sergeant,” Thursday said. “Your shift must be about over. Why don’t you come into the den, you can call in from there, and then stay and have a bite.”

Jakes appeared to waver for a moment. Morse quite got the impression that he might welcome the chance to have tea with Joan, but didn’t relish the idea of having tea with Joan while sitting right beside Inspector Thursday.

“That’s a fine idea,” Mrs. Thursday said.  “It’s all settled, then. I’ll just go and tell Sam to set another place.” But as she turned to leave, Jakes called after her. “I’m afraid. I can’t. I’ve got something on. For later. Thank you, all the same."

 

“Another time, maybe?” Joan asked, a glitter of laughter in her voice.

Jakes cleared his throat and nodded. “Yes. Of course.”

Joan smiled and then tugged on Morse’s sleeve. “C’mon, then, you,” she said.

 

Morse followed her down the hall, back to the dining room, to help her and Sam to set the table. And as he set down each fork, his heart began to sink. He’d have to lie. And not lie. This statement is false. The equation is impossible, and, no, it isn’t, Morse.

 

****

Thursday felt as if they had dialed all the way back to the start, back to square one. Morse sat in his corner chair as if he was afraid to speak, as if he felt he needed to weigh each word by the ounce.

 

The galling thing of it was, Sam and Joan kept cutting _him_ furtive looks, as if they wanted him to do something about it. When Thursday knew there was nothing for it but to wait.

It cast a pall over the table; it was as if they had just gotten used to beginning to balance on five wheels and weren’t quite sure how to revert back to four.  

 

Morse kept his eyes on his plate, silent and subdued. So, he had ‘run into someone,’ had he?  Well, it wasn’t a lie, Thursday supposed.

Damn, those bastards were fast.

 

“Why don’t you eat something,” Joan said.

Morse looked uncertain. “I’m not . . . very hungry. I best go back upstairs and see if the paint’s dry enough to start repainting.”

“You _best_   just do as your told,” Joan corrected.

“Why would you want to repaint it already?” Sam asked. “Didn’t you just do all that today?”

Morse shrugged. “Did you see it?” he asked quietly, as if that were explanation enough.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “But Mum says she doesn’t care how we decorate our rooms, so long as she can see the floor."

“But it’s not my room,” Morse countered softly. “I was only helping. For when the students come.”

“What students?” Sam asked.

“The students your parents want to rent it out to, once you’ve moved out,” Morse explained.

“What?”  Sam asked. “I never heard anyth . . . “

 

Thursday felt the table jolt a bit and felt sure that Joan had stamped on Sam’s foot to silence him.

 

“Well,” Win said, “ _I_ think you should leave it just as it is. Don’t you like it?”

Morse looked down and nodded slightly and shrugged.

 

And that was as near to a yes as they would likely get.

 

Joan regarded him thoughtfully for a moment and then took it upon herself to change the subject. She began chatting about work, telling a story about an elderly woman who had come into the bank, wanting to open an account for her Bichon Frise.

“The manager wasn’t quite sure what to do about it,” she said, laughing.

She ladeled a few potatoes onto her plate and flicked a look at Morse. “Sam and I are going out with a group to the fair tomorrow. You really ought to come with us.”  

Morse nodded absentmindedly. “All right,” he said.

“We’ll leave around eight,” she said.

“All right,” Morse said.

 

Thursday was suspicious as hell that Morse was suddenly so tractable. “ _A fair?”_ he had blurted out incredulously when Thursday had suggested it in the pub garden earlier that day.

 

It was as if Morse was afraid to step a toe out of line. Ruddy ponces. They must have frightened him half to death.

 

Morse glanced up then, and he must have caught the dark look on Thursday's face, because he almost seemed to flinch as their eyes met. 

Thursday tried to smile encouragingly.

“Well, that’s smashing, then. I’ll give you each a few pounds, you can bring me and your mum home a goldfish, eh?” he said.

“I promised Janie I’d win her one of those stuffed tigers, if they have them again this year,” Sam said.

“Dream on," Joan said, “Those games are all fixed.”

 

Morse’s eyes were trained on his plate again, and now they were slowly drifting closed.

“Are you all right?” Win asked.

Morse blinked. “Yes,” he said. “Just knackered, I suppose.”

“Why don’t you wash up, then, Morse,” she said. “You still have paint on your nose.”

“Oh,” Morse said.

 

And it was the damnedest thing.

It was those words, of all things, that brought on a gentle trace of a smile.  

******

Thursday tossed the tea towel over his shoulder and stacked the last plate that Win had passed him into the drying rack, just as Joan came downstairs, looking as cross as two sticks.

“He’s been in the shower for a half an hour!” she cried.

Thursday sighed. The bath, he had thought, would be the problem.

He and Sam had learned to keep their turns short, and Win reserved her longer routine for the mornings—But in evenings, as far as their single bath at the top of the stairs went, Joan was the queen. She would waltz in and out, her hair in a towel turned into a turban, her face painted pink or green with lotions and masks and who knew what all.

“Let him be, Joanie. He’s a guest, after all,” Thursday said.

Thursday couldn’t help but remember the locks on the bathroom door at Clive Durrell’s neat brick house, and he felt he could almost see how it must have went. “Twenty minutes, Morse,” the man would say. And all the while, Durrell would wait right outside the door. Being left alone must be a luxury Morse had not had in years.

 

Joan, who until now had seemed all patience with Morse, looked singularly unimpressed. “Well, if this is how it’s going to be, I’m going to need a better mirror in my room, at the very least,” she said.

 

And there hadn’t even been a mirror in that bathroom. Why hadn’t the lad even had a mirror?

 

Oh, hell.

 

If Durrell had thought that he shouldn’t be trusted with one, perhaps he had had cause. Had Morse ever.....? Perhaps Thursday _shouldn’t_ have left him up there that long unattended, either.

Thursday tossed the towel onto the counter and bolted up the stairs. Joan seemed pleased by this—glad that Morse was to be evicted, after all—and followed.

 

Thursday rapped briskly on the bathroom door. “Morse!” he shouted.  

There was a creaking sound as the taps were turned off.

“Yes?” Morse called.

Thursday’s heart felt as if it was slowing, beating hard against his ribs.

 

“Time to give somebody else a turn, Morse!” Joan called primly over his shoulder.

“All right,” he called.

After just a few minutes, Morse emerged, tousle-haired and pink-faced, clad in a pair of Sam’s old pajamas.

“Sorry,” he said.

Just then, Sam sauntered by, with his books under his arm. “Rules of the house, Morse. Men aren’t allowed that long in the bathroom. Joan needs all of eternity to put pink goo all over her face.”

Joan turned on him at once. “You be quiet,” she said.

 

It was good Sam was there; he turned the whole episode into a joke—Thursday had feared that perhaps he had overstepped his bounds. The last thing he wanted to do was to be seen as some tyrant, banging on the door.

 

“Sorry,” Morse said. “I  . . . I couldn’t get the paint off.”

“Well, all right, then,” Joan conceded. “I suppose that’s as good an excuse as any. I'll let it pass this once.”

 

Morse nodded, seemingly unsure as to whether or not she was joking, and then slipped out the door and headed down the hall. And Thursday was glad then, that Joan had called him up here. He wanted to be there when Morse saw the things in his room.

And sure enough, he froze in the doorway, startled by the sight of his trunk and record player. He walked into the room as if he were sleepwalking and opened the red box record player, slowly, almost reverently.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“I ran up to Lincolnshire,” Thursday admitted.

 

For a moment, Morse said nothing. 

 

“You saw them?” he asked, at last.  

“Yes,” Thursday said, quietly.  

 

A faint line formed between Morse’s brows, and he nodded, as if accepting all the things left unsaid. That was Morse’s answer then, the answer to the question he had posed in the pub garden.

 

 “Did you see. . . . did you see Joycie?” he asked.

“Joycie?” Thursday asked, perplexed.

“My sister. My . . . my half-sister,” Morse explained.

“I didn’t see her, lad,” Thursday said.

“She might be off, out of the house. Maybe she’s even gotten married,” he said. He shrugged. “She would have tried, I think. To send me a letter, at least.”

 

Thursday said nothing, only watched, from the doorway, arms folded, as Morse sat down before the trunk and opened it up.

 

“Well,” Morse said, pulling out his records. “At least they didn’t just throw all of this out.”

 

The idea seemed to leave Morse feeling heartened. But it didn’t sit right with Thursday. Was this really the best consolation Morse could hope for?

 

Well, they didn’t look for me for five years, but they didn’t throw my records out into the rubbish, either?

 

But who was he to say? Because Morse was there, looking comforted at the thought that he was not completely forgotten, thumbing through his records as if he was greeting long lost friends.

 

Thursday found he had to leave the room so Morse would not see the expression on his face.

 

******************

Thursday woke up slowly to the small sounds of someone moving about downstairs. He’d been a light sleeper since the war, and years of stakeouts reinforced the benefits of always keeping one eye open.

He made his way slowly down the stairs, and then, he heard it: the rustling of papers from the den, through the half-open, sliding white door.

 

He came into the room to find Morse, sitting in the middle of the carpet like a bird amidst a nest of white papers, scribbling in pencil across a page as fast as his hand could move. What on earth was he doing? Trying to recreate the documents that had been taken from him? 

 

“Morse?” Thursday asked.

 

But Morse kept at it, as if Thursday hadn’t spoken, exponents and equations flying in gray lead lines across an expanse of white.

 

“Morse?” he prompted, a little louder, a little more forcefully. “What are you doing?”

 

Morse half-jumped at that, turning around and looking over his shoulder, his blue eyes wide in the semi-darkness, like those of an animal in a trap. Instinctively, Thursday took one step back, so that the lad would not feel cornered.

 

Morse looked at him a good long while before he spoke.

 

“I have to finish,” he said at last.

“Lad,” Thursday sighed.  

“I told you. I have to finish.”

 

Thursday hesitated before he said the one word.

 

“Why?”

 

As he expected, Morse looked stunned, as if he himself didn’t know. He looked out over the mess of papers, and suddenly, his face was utterly bereft, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing there.

 

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” he said, and his voice was a little wild. “I never had any interest in this. I was reading Greats,” he said.

“I know,” Thursday said.  

“But I have to finish.”

“No, Morse,” Thursday said. He walked over and knelt down on the carpet across from him. Then, slowly, he began to gather the papers up.

 

He was just picking up one piece, when a long, narrow hand flew out on top of it, holding it back onto the carpet.

“Don’t throw it out,” Morse pled.

“All right,” Thursday said. “But it’s late. Actually, it’s so late, it’s early. So why don’t we just put this away for a while, yeah?”

 

Morse looked mournfully out over the mess of papers, and said, “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds. Waiting that hour that ripens to their doom.”

 

Thursday frowned. What the hell was that supposed to mean? It was obvious he wasn’t thinking clearly. He was overtired, that was all. Overwhelmed.

 

“Are you sure that you wouldn’t feel better, just telling me the truth of what happened this evening?” Thursday asked shrewdly.

His eyes snapped up at that, fierce and blue. “What?”

“You ‘ran into someone?’” Thursday prompted. “On the way back from Richardson’s?”

 

Morse looked affronted. “I _did_ run into someone when I was leaving Richardson’s,” he said. “I’m not a liar.”

“But it wasn’t an old friend you ran into, was it, now? Not Lord Belborough popping in for a can of tuna, was it?” Thursday asked. 

Morse looked at him, his face impassive, and, then, he slowly shook his head.

 

“Was it . . . someone from Special Branch?” Thursday asked.

 

Morse’s face crumpled. He looked about the floor as if he were at sea instead of in the middle of a carpet, as if he were casting about for a rope to cling on to, so that he might pull himself back to the ship.

Morse was prepared to dodge the truth, if he could, but, as Thursday suspected, he would not lie when asked about the matter point-blank.

 

“I was walking along the sidewalk. Back from Richardson’s. And they pulled up,” Morse said. “They were in a big black car.”

The flicker of fear that flitted across Morse’s face was all too clear.

“Those bastards,” Thursday hissed. “Did they grab you right off the street?”

 

Surely, if they had done their homework, they would have an inkling of Morse’s history. Surely, they would have a little more sensitivity than to partially recreate a traumatizing event, arguably the most defining event of Morse’s life.

 

“No,” Morse hastened to correct. “They just made it clear that I would be talking with them sooner or later . . . so that I might as well make it sooner.”

 

Thursday couldn’t say he much liked that, either.

 

“What do you mean, _‘made it clear?_ ’ What? Did they threaten you?”

 

Morse looked down and shrugged one bony shoulder. Thursday let the silence lapse on, hoping Morse would become uncomfortable with it and offer more, but when it came to silences, Morse was the master.

 

“So, then what happened?” Thursday said, at last.

“They took me to a house.”

 

Well, shit ‘em. That was just what happened the last time.

 

“And then?” Thursday prompted.

“They asked me questions. They . . .”  and, here, Morse hesitated.

“What?” Thursday prompted.

 

“They said . .  .” Morse began, uncertainly. “They said if I helped them, they’d offer me an honorary discharge.”

“What?” Thursday asked, incredulously.

“They had a file on me. All false. My duty stations, medals I’d earned. I could have a past, they said. So, I could get a job, have a future.”

 

“Well,” Thursday said, sitting back, reconsidering—because he _had_ seen that as a hurdle—how could Morse get a job even bagging groceries if he couldn’t account for the last five years of his life?

“Well, that was decent of them, at least. That sounds fair enough,” Thursday conceded.  

“Do you think so?” Morse asked sharply.

Thursday blinked, surprised by Morse’s sudden vehemence.

“You were in the war,” Morse said. “Did you receive an honorary discharge?”

“Yes,” Thursday replied. 

“Doesn’t it make you angry that I should be offered one, when I didn’t earn it?”

 

That’s what was sticking in his craw, was it?

 

“No,” Thursday said. “Not in the least. Why shouldn’t you have a chance, same as anyone else?”

“Because I haven’t earned it, have I, sir?” Morse said.

 

For a long time, Thursday said nothing.

 

“What happened,” he began slowly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” Morse asked.

 

Thursday sighed. That would have to be a matter for another day.

“So, you answered their questions?” he asked. 

 

“Yes," Morse said. 

“Well, that's that, then. It's over. They can’t ask any more of you than that, can they?” Thursday said.

 

Morse said nothing.

 

“Isn’t that right?”  Thursday prompted.

Morse hesitated. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

 

“Come on, lad,” Thursday said, rising up again to his knees to begin picking up the papers. "Let’s get this up before Win sees this mess, and then let’s get to bed.”

But Morse put his hand back on top of a paper, just as Thursday started to pick it up. “But I have to finish," he said. 

“Why?" Thursday asked. "Just a moment ago you said you didn’t want to do any of this.”

Morse looked out over the papers again, a faint crease between his brows.

 

“We best get back to sleep," Thursday said again. "We have a few books of mugshots we’ve had brought over to Cowley. I was hoping you might take a look through them in the morning.”

“All right,” Morse said.

“And then the thing for you to do is to start putting all of this behind you. Why don’t you call Tony?” Thursday suggested.

 

Morse appeared to mull this over. “I suppose you’re right," he said, at last. "Would you mind, do you think?  If I called Tony? I mean, could he come here?" 

“I think Win could think of worse things than having the Earl of Marston to tea," Thursday said.

Morse laughed. “Tony’s not the _Earl of Marston._ ”

 

Thursday scowled. Could they somehow have their signals crossed? The man had Morse’s picture in a photo album, for Christ’s sake. How could it be they were speaking of two different people?

“Well, lad, I think that big pile on Lake Silence I visited might say otherwise," Thursday said. 

“Oh, I know he lives there,” Morse said.  “But Tony’s not the 'Earl of Marston.' His father is.”

 

Well. Of course. Morse had missed five years. And even though Thursday was hardly the type to bother following the society column, he did think he heard somewhere that the old earl had passed on a few years back.

 

“When I was there, it looked as if Tony was running things, lad," Thursday said quietly. 

Morse seemed to understand.

"Oh," he said, softly. "I'm sorry, then. He was a kind person." 

 

Thursday rose to his feet. "So all the more reason to call, then, eh?" he said. "You can get out for a bit. It'll take you out of yourself. Do you some good." 

"All right," Morse said, absentmindedly, as he rose to his feet. "I thought we might go on a tour at Fenix." 

Thursday turned and looked at him. "What? The perfume factory?"

"Yes," Morse said. "I saw a sign. They give public tours." 

“What? Do you want to work there? As a chemist or something?” Thursday asked. 

Morse shrugged.

“Well, it’s up to you, lad. And Tony of course.”

 

Although what the debonair man he had met at Lake Silence might do on a factory tour with a group of blue-haired matrons and pedants, Thursday could not imagine.

 

"You won't . . . " Morse began. 

"I won't what?" Thursday asked. 

"You won't throw all that away, will you?" Morse asked. 

Thursday sighed. He had hoped to distract him, he had hoped Morse might forget about all these ruddy equations and diagrams, all these remnants of his former life. 

Because it seemed, as he watched Morse's face, that a whirlwind of thoughts were circling there, as if Morse was formulating some plan. As if there was something Morse was definitely not saying in the silences between them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a shorter chapter than usual--I am going out of town and wanted to update before I go. I might be able to post another short one tomorrow...
> 
> This is my first attempt at having a Certain Two Characters hold a conversation without calling one another "a smug bastard" or a "pretentious little arse," though. ("Nice language, Emily Dickenson!") So I hope it goes all right... 
> 
> Also, this is the last sort of set-up chapter, before Morse sets off on the case. :0)

 

Thursday walked slowly down the stairs, picking out the voices floating up from the dining room as he went, and— as he expected in light of what had happened the night before— there was no low warble threaded through the quick and confident staccato notes.

He thought that he might at least see Morse sitting quietly in his chair, but the lad was nowhere to be seen. There was only an empty expanse of white and gold striped wallpaper there in his corner.

“Where’s Morse?” Thursday asked. “We’re due to leave in half an hour.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Joan said. “Still asleep, I expect.”

 

Well, of course. He’d been up all hours.

 

Thursday turned and trudged back up the stairs, around the top of the landing and down the hall to the last room on the left, to the small extra bedroom at the back of the house. The door was standing half-open, so he stole a glance inside.

The garden paintings on the walls looked softer, more realistic, in the weak morning light, and Morse’s record player lay open, the needle slowly revolving around the inner label, making a sound not unlike the wind. He must have fallen asleep listening to a record turned low.

Morse himself was fast asleep, arms and legs sprawled like so much dead weight across the bed, which now stood beneath the open window. The lad must have pushed it over to the back wall sometime during the night, so that he could look up at the sky as he dozed. Even now, his face, pale and still, was turned toward it. 

“Morse?” Thursday prompted.

But Morse did not stir. And no wonder, considering he’d been roaming around downstairs for God only knew how long, writing out all of those equations and diagrams. The way he was going, he’d never get his days and nights set to rights.

 

“Morse,” Thursday said again.

 

He pushed the door open, and something fell to the ground: Thursday realized it was the garment bag with the evening suit that the lad had kept stored in his trunk. For lack of anywhere better, he had hung it on the door.

Thursday would have to get that extra wardrobe down from the attic. It would be a bear to move, but between the three of them—he, Sam and Morse— they could manage it. If he had got it up there, there must be a way to get it down, after all.

 

“Morse!” Thursday said again. 

 

Morse jumped up, then, with a gasp, and stared uncomprehendingly around the room. Instinctively, Thursday started forward.

 

“It’s all right, Morse.”

 

Morse blinked at him, looking confused, as if he couldn’t quite place him.

 

Thursday regarded him uncertainly.

“Morse?” he asked.

 

“Oh,” Morse said. And Thursday could see it—the moment in which the lad recognized him. “Sorry.”

 

He ducked his head and rubbed his eyes with the index finger and thumb of his left hand. ”I forgot where I was, for a moment,” he said. 

 

“‘’Ts all right,” Thursday intoned.

“It’s just . . . I spent so long wishing I’d wake up somewhere else, that I can’t actually believe sometimes that . . . that I finally am. Waking up someplace else, I mean. It feels like I’m dreaming.”  

“It’s all right, lad,” Thursday said again. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It's just that we're due at the station soon.”

“You would think . . . with my life having been so monotonous. . .  that I would have stopped dreaming, but instead, it was just the opposite. My dreams sort of took the place of everything else, became more vivid. And now, I can’t be sure,” he said. “‘Do I wake or sleep?’ It must be how Miranda felt. ‘O brave new world, to have such creatures in it.’”

 

Thursday frowned at that. That seemed the sort of talk that ought not to be encouraged.

 

“I just wanted to let you know that Sergeant Jakes would be by in about a half an hour, to pick us up.”

 

The lad stilled at that. “Jakes?”

 

“Yeah,” Thursday said. “You said you would look through those mugshots, remember?”

“Oh,” he said, swinging his legs down out of the bed. He looked to be in a bit of a panic. Thursday couldn’t help but wonder if, considering their altercation the day before, Morse wasn’t too keen on the idea of being caught out tousle-haired and half-asleep by Jakes; it was as if he was determined to show the sardonic sergeant only the strongest of fronts.

******

By the time the doorbell rang, Morse was dressed and pressed, sitting in his corner chair, working away thoughtfully at a piece of toast.

Thursday went to answer it.

 

“Ready for the off, then?” Jakes asked, striding with his typical swagger down the narrow hall.

“Just about,” Thursday said, as they emerged into the dining room.

“Are you ready, Morse?” Thursday asked.

On seeing Jakes, Morse leapt from his chair. “Yes,” he said, “I’m ready to go.”

But Thursday shook his head and nodded for Morse to sit back down. “Might as well finish your breakfast. Not as if those photos are going anywhere.”

“No,” Morse said. “It’s fine. I can finish in the car.”

Jakes snorted. “And let you get crumbs all over the Jag? I don’t think so. Why don’t you just finish your toast, like Inspector Thursday said.”

Morse sank back down in his chair, but he glared at Jakes all the same. Thursday thought his expression was oddly formidable, too, for someone as quiet as Morse, but Jakes seemed undaunted.

 

 

Once they were safely in the car, Jakes started filling him in on the goings-on at the nick right away.

He knew not to mention work at the house; he was conversant with the hat-stand rule.

 

“You missed it last night,” he said. “I went to check in one last time after I left yours, and there were some big wheels from Special Branch there, collecting all of those papers.”

“What?” Morse blurted, from the back seat.

“Yes. So sayonara to all of that. It’s in their hands now,” Jakes said.

 

Thursday winced. He wished that Jakes would have waited to have told him that in private. Although, he supposed, the lad was bound to notice the notebooks and papers were gone once they got to the station.

Still, was it necessary for Jakes to share the news with such obvious relish in his voice?

 

“But now what am I going to do?’ Morse asked, plaintively.

Jakes made a smooth left turn and glanced back at him in the rearview mirror. “It’s naught to do with you,” he said.

“It’s everything to do with me. It’s everything _of_ me,” Morse said.

 

Thursday sighed. “What’s this now? Just last night you said you had no interest in any of that. That you never did.”

“But where did they take it all?” Morse asked.

“To the GCHQ I expect,” Jakes said.

“Where is that? London?” Morse asked.

 

Thursday felt his jaw tighten. Christ, but the lad was stubborn. Was it this very tenaciousness that had led him to be targeted by Durrell? This refusal to let a problem go?

 

“Never you mind where it is,” Thursday snapped. 

 

“But now I’ll have to do all of it all over again,” Morse said, his voice a little wild.

“You already tried that last night, remember?” Thursday rumbled.  

Jakes laughed. “What’s this?” he asked.  
 

But Morse ignored him. “Oh, God,” he moaned. "Some of those papers I've never even seen. I'll never finish." He leaned forward then, resting his forehead against the window. For a moment, Thursday feared that he might faint, he had gone so pale. But instead, he simply grew quiet, looking blankly out of the widow, as if his thoughts were hundreds of miles away from the backseat of the Jag.

Jakes took a cautious glance at him in the rearview mirror. It did seem an extreme reaction.

Thursday realized, then, that he had been so eager to shelter the lad from Bellevue—where he scarcely belonged—that he didn’t stop to consider whether or not the lad might not need any help at all in coping with what had happened. Five years. It was a long time. The world must seem strange to him, having been locked away for so long.

But he was doing fine. He was adjusting. He spoke now as clear as a bell. He was just a bit rattled, that was all.

 

He looked over at Jakes. “He’s just a bit rattled, that’s all,” he said. “Special Branch picked him up yesterday, right off the sidewalk. That’s where he had disappeared off to.”

 

Jakes hissed through his teeth. “Jesus. Isn’t that just what he said Durrell did?”

 

Thursday’s eyes flashed at the name. It was only now that Jakes had said it, that Thursday realized that Morse never did. Morse, he noticed, only ever referred to Durrell as “that man.” Was it because he couldn’t bear to hear the word, that he needed the support of a euphemism? Or, perhaps, in a world that contained no others, a name for Durrell had not been necessary?

 

Thursday flicked a look into the backseat to gauge Morse’s reaction, but he was still looking silently out of the window.  

Just when Thursday assumed that the lad must not have been paying attention, that he must still be lost in his own thoughts, a low voice came from the backseat.

 

“That’s just what I told them,” Morse said, glumly.

 

Jakes’ eyes snapped up at this, and he smiled, seemingly delighted at the idea that Morse might have put Special Branch agents in their place.

“You did, huh?” Jakes said. “And what did they say?”

For a moment, Morse didn’t answer. Then he said, “They said the difference was that once we were done with our very nice dinner, they were going to put me back where they found me.”

Thursday gritted his teeth at that detail.  Morse was a young man who had emerged from an ordeal much sounder than one could ever have hoped to have expected. Not a shell on a beach to be picked up and put down again.

 

Jakes laughed.  “Dinner? What did they have?”

"Potted shrimps,” Morse answered promptly.

Jakes laughed again.

 

And what did they think they were they playing at, putting on a whole little pantomime? Why the hell did they give the lad dinner? He was a witness to be questioned. He wasn't a colleague to consult over poached salmon and a bottle of white wine.

 

 

“Was it good?” Jakes asked.

Morse sat up from the window and looked at Jakes in disdain. “Well, I didn’t _eat_ any of it,” he said.

“What did you do? Just sit there and glower at them?”

“Well,” Morse said, appearing to give the matter some thought. “Essentially, yes.”

“Oh,” Jakes said. “ _Essentially._ ”  

 

Morse went quiet again, leaning back against the window, thinking again of that avalanche of paper, no doubt. He didn’t seem to realize he had revealed more about last night than perhaps he had meant to.

  

Just when Thursday assumed he would say no more on the subject, Morse sat up abruptly. “And I am not _rattled_ ,” he said, as if keen to make this point clear.  “They weren’t remotely frightening. They were like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

“How’s that?” Jakes asked.

“From _Through the Looking Glass._ They kept finishing each other’s sentences. And there was a waiter there, who was like the Cheshire Cat. He winked at me.”

 

Jakes looked at Thursday, widening his eyes and raising his brows, suggesting, of course, that Morse was simply barmy.

 

Thursday scowled. He had no cause to think so; after all, he hadn’t heard Morse so misinterpret any doings around the house in such a manner.

And the lad had given too many details for the thing to not be true.

 

******************

 

It was all gone. All of it. Years and years. And what was the point of it?

 

The table where Sergeant Jakes and the elderly don had sat yesterday was bare, cleared off, the dark wood spotless and gleaming. Morse longed to walk over and at least put his hand on the smooth surface, to at least feel the ghost of his lost work. It might help him to remember it all, now that he had to start all over again. And what of the pieces he had never seen? How would he recreate those? How would he ever finish? How would he ever get it all out of his head?

 

But, predictably enough, Inspector Thursday shepherded him away from that entire corner, escorting him back to his office.

He sat him down behind the large desk. It was all right. There wasn’t a window, but the room smelled comfortably of wool and tobacco.

Inspector Thursday brought a few thin volumes over from a table, then, and laid them before him. 

 

“If you see anyone who looks likely, take the photos out and set them in this file,” Thursday said.

”All right,” Morse replied.

 

Morse was picking up the first one from off the pile, when Sergeant Jakes slid in through the half-open door. “Mr. Bright wants to speak with you, sir,” he said. 

Inspector Thursday appeared to hesitate. “You’ll be all right, then?” he asked.

“Yes,” Morse said, flipping open the first book.

“All right.  I’ll leave you to it.”

And then Inspector Thursday followed Jakes out the door.

 

Morse flipped and flipped. And so many of them all looked alike in the small, black and white squares, their expressions identical as they glared into the camera, holding placards before them.

Morse scanned one page and then another.

It had been dark. But the gunman’s nose looked odd in the shadows. Like it was off center. Like it had been broken? His hair was short, cropped even, glistening in the wan light from the window, the first glimmer of the moon that Morse had seen in years. The gunman’s hair was light, not dark, reflecting the silver moon glow.

And it had all happened so fast. It all happened so fast, Morse didn’t know what to think. People were shouting and falling, and there was something warm that splattered against him, and then a searing pain.

Morse flipped another page. But the gunman was not there, either.

 

After a few minutes, Sergeant Jakes came into the room.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“No,” Morse said quietly.  

Jakes walked over, picking up a light chair as he went. In one fluid motion, he set it next to the larger one in which Morse sat and then seemed almost to spin around it before taking a seat, as deftly as a cat.

“The photographs are all static, of course,” he said. “You have to sort of tune out the way the man moved, to help to make the match. Just think of him as if he’s in one frame of a movie reel.”  

“That’s the only way I remember what he looked like, though,” Morse said. "Him moving about in the light of the window." 

 

Jakes rocked back in his chair at his ease, and Morse found himself wishing that the man would go away. He couldn’t think with the sergeant sitting there, watching him.  Judging him.

But of course, that must be just why he had been sent in here. To keep an eye on him. After he’d tried to destroy those awful papers yesterday, he would never be trusted at the station on his own.

 

He felt a lurch in his stomach as he remembered that set of notes. Someone might be reading them even now, even at this very moment.  And it wasn't fair. Those were all about him. And he wasn't a "subject." He did have a name. 

Even though he never used it. 

 

 He found himself flipping through the pages more and more slowly.

 

 “Is it bothering you, my sitting here?” Jakes asked, at last.

 

Yes, Morse wanted to say. But he didn't. 

 

Because the awful thing was, what Jakes had said the day before was true. And it was also not true. How could he ever explain the evolution of what had happened to anyone? How could he explain it, when he himself didn't fully understand?

 

“I know what you’re thinking,” Morse said, at last. 

“Oh?” Jakes said, lighting a cigarette, with a flash of a silver lighter and a confident click. “And what’s that? Care to fill me in?”

“You think, if I really had wanted to, I could have gotten away,” Morse said.

“I never said that.”

“Yes. Yes, you did. ‘You should have done that years ago,’ you said. When I kicked you.”

 

Jakes snorted a laugh at that, and then took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette.

”I didn’t mean it like that,” Jakes said. 

 

“But I did,” Morse continued, as if Jakes had not spoken. “I _did_ do that years ago. When I first figured out that it couldn’t be true, what he said. I tried. I must have tried every day. For a while. But. But you’re right. It’s only now that I realize that, after a time, I _had_ given up. Because. Because I never knew what to believe. Because I did . . . I _did_ believe him. At first. I _did_ go along. But then I didn’t. Because it just didn’t … it didn’t sound right to me.”

 

“Yeah, well. That’s one of the games people like that play, isn’t it?” Jakes said.

 

“Is it?” Morse asked. “And so I tried. But then, after a while, I didn't. It all became just how it was. That night, I could see the door was not locked. I sat there for so long, looking at it. Even with the door unlocked, I didn’t go. Why didn’t I go?” Morse said.

 

“You did go,” Jakes said.  

“Yes,” Morse conceded. “After a while.”

“So there you are.”

 

Morse shook his head. “It wasn’t that simple. Do you ... do you understand what I meant, though? What I was saying?”

“No,” Jakes said simply.

 

Morse looked back to the mugshots. It was pointless to try to explain. 

“No,” Morse agreed. “You can't understand. Nothing like that could ever happen to you. You’re a police officer.”

Jakes blew a steady stream of smoke up into the air. “Yeah, well. That’s me, isn’t it? And that’s why we have police officers.”

“Why?” Morse asked. 

 Jakes looked at him as though the answer was obvious. “Because not everyone can be a police officer,” he said. “That’s why we need police officers.”

“Oh,” Morse said. “That’s true, I suppose.”

 

He flipped another page absentmindedly. There was one photo that could be a remote possibility, so Morse pulled it out and set it aside.

“Do you think . . .?" he began.  

“What?” Jakes prompted.

“Do you think I could be one? A police officer?” Morse asked.

Jakes leaned forward and stubbed out his cigarette in a glass ashtray on Thursday’s desk. “Don’t see why not. You’d have to put the hours in. It would be a slog. You don’t just wake up a detective sergeant, you know.”

“I know,” Morse said.  

 “You’d have to learn the law. You can’t go around ticketing grocery store managers for grammatical errors in their signs.”

“No,” Morse conceded. “But you _should_ be able to.”

Jakes laughed, then, and Morse looked at him, perplexed. What was so amusing? He certainly was an odd man.

 

After one glance at Morse’s face, Jakes’ laughter died away.

 

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “You were serious, weren’t you?”

 

*****

Thursday sat in the chair before Mr. Bright’s desk, waiting for him to finish his telephone call. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Thursday rather got the impression that this was deliberate; that he was being treated as an errant schoolboy.

“So,” Mr. Bright said, finally, as he returned the heavy black receiver to its cradle. "Is Morse looking through the mug shots, then?”"

“He is.”

“Right. We’re to pull any out that he lights upon and send them on to Special Branch," Mr. Bright said. 

“So that’s that then,” Thursday said.

“Yes, Thursday,” Mr. Bright said, “That is that.” 

“Nine murders on our ground," Thursday said. "A gunman potentially still here in Oxford, on the loose, and we cave? Is that how you really want to work this, sir?” 

“There is no point in arguing, Thursday. As you might well imagine, that matter is strictly out of my hands,” Mr. Bright said, adding shrewdly, “And some might say it was high time that the matter was out of yours.”

Thursday frowned. He knew Mr. Bright was referring to his delay in reporting the coding machine and what he and Jakes had uncovered about Morse.

 

“Now. Carry on,” Mr. Bright said.

 

“Sir,” Thursday said.

******

“I don’t know if I think that any of those were quite right,” Morse said, as soon as they were back in the car.

“Just have to trust your gut,” Thursday said.

“Well,” Morse replied. “My gut thinks that it wasn’t any of those men, then.”

“Just leave that part to us then, eh?” Thursday said, starting the engine with a rumble. “So. Were you still planning on calling Tony when you get home? I left the number on the table.”

 

It was all too clear what Thursday was saying. Forget it ever happened. Call Tony. Go to the fair. Get on with things. Just let it all recede in the rearview mirror.

 

But it just wasn’t that simple.

Or maybe it was. Maybe a part of him was so insistent on holding onto the past, because he was afraid of stepping into the future?

 

Because the terrible truth was: he had been glad when he had seen that man fall. A man was shot to pieces, and he had been glad of it. It was difficult to imagine.

  
But he had been afraid, too—because what was he supposed to do now? He had wished for his freedom for so long that he wasn’t quite sure if he knew what to do with it anymore. And so he had rejoiced and mourned all at the same time, and how to explain? How to explain when he could see for himself how wrong it all was?

 

And he was afraid of Tony, as well—afraid to talk to anyone from his previous life. What if— from just one look at him—Tony could tell, what if Tony thought that he had been irrevocably changed? Wouldn't that mean that there would be no way forward, no way of letting the past five years drift off into the horizon, gently receding in Thursday’s rearview mirror? 

 

  
Soon, they were pulling into the Thursday’s drive. Morse startled; he could scarcely remember the trip. He looked over to see Thursday watching him, his face heavy with concern. He wasn’t sure what expression he must have on his face to make the Inspector look at him like that. So he turned to look out the window. And he tried to speak. But no words came.

 

*****

When they got home, he dialed the number before he had the chance to back out. Thursday had left a piece of paper near the telephone, with Tony’s private number on it, written in his familiar back-slant print, but Morse had no need of it. He remembered the number well enough.

The phone rang four times.

“Tony,” a voice said.

Morse found himself caught off-guard; he wasn’t prepared for that, for how he might sound exactly the same.

“Hello?” Tony asked.

And Morse couldn’t speak. How many times in those first few months did he dream of doing just this? Of getting to a telephone somehow and calling Tony? "Tony, you have to help me!” and Tony would call the police, and the police would somehow be able to trace the call and find where he was. Because he didn't know.

And now, it was really happening. Tony, was there, on the line. For one awful moment, he thought he might burst into tears.

 

“Hello?” Tony said. “Is anyone there?”

 

“Tony?” Morse said. And it came out as a croak—he didn’t sound like himself, and he could hear the uncertainty there, on the other end of the line.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “Tony?” he said. “It’s Pagan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to see the face Morse makes at Jakes at the end of their conversation, see the episode "Cartouche," right after Thursday says "B-I-T, bit me." XD


	7. Chapter 7

 

“Pagan?” Tony gasped. “Good God. Where are you?”

“Oh,” Morse said. “Headington.”

 _“Headington?_ ” Tony said, as if he could not believe that he might be anywhere so prosaic. Morse got the impression he would have found it easier to believe that he was calling from a research station in Antarctica.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Morse said.

“A police officer came by a few days ago asking about you, did you know? It was all rather enigmatic. I haven’t quite known what to think since,” Tony said.

 

Morse had never intended that: Why had Inspector Thursday gone to visit Tony? What could have led him there? Thursday had told him that he had talked to Tony, but Morse was so caught up in thinking of those papers, that he hadn’t stopped to ask why.

 

“I'm sorry,” Morse said.

 _“Sorry?_ ” Tony asked, as if the word did not even begin to cover it. But what else could Morse say? Even if he felt that he _could_ tell the truth, tell his story out loud, would Tony ever believe it?

 

Although if any one _might_ believe the truth, it would be Tony: he had often been with him—walking to tutorial or sitting at high table—when that man had approached him, badgering him about switching from Greats to mathematics. 

 

“Why don’t you tell that man to sod off?” Tony had once said, watching his back as he departed, his eyes narrowed.

And Morse had looked at him in surprise. For that wasn’t good manners, surely? Morse was a scholarship student from Lincolnshire; who was he to tell a don to ‘sod off?’

 

 

“Where the devil have you been all this time?” Tony asked.

 

Morse felt his throat grow tight, his heart skip a beat. He wasn't ready for this, for any of it. Because, of course, he should have known that Tony would ask that first off. What else would he ask, after five years?

 

“I . . . I can’t say,” Morse said. 

“What do you mean, you _can’t_ _say_?” Tony asked.

“I . . .  I just can’t,” Morse said.

 

It was much better to change the subject.

 

“Are you very busy, this afternoon?” Morse asked.

Tony sputtered. “What? Right now?”

“Yes,” Morse said.

“Well, I . . .” and Morse felt a pang—he could almost hear Tony mentally rearranging his schedule—he wasn’t only just a student anymore, after all. Tony was now an earl and a man of the world, running his own estate, with meetings to attend and appointments to keep, whereas Morse had nothing but a blank calendar and a time capsule of a trunk dating from 1960.

Perhaps there _were_ limits to how far a friendship could stretch, if it was forced to bridge such disparate worlds. Perhaps he had no business calling Tony at all. Their paths had diverged quite wildly over the past five years—Tony would have moved on, and he.... well.... he hadn’t moved anywhere. He was like a living relic from a different time.

 

"Of course,” Tony said. “Can you come up to the house?”

“I don’t have a car,” Morse said. “Can you come here?”

***********

Morse kept watch out of the window of the den and then went to open the front door as soon as he saw Tony pull up in a large and shining Egyptian blue automobile. It was completely over the top--with headlights the size of dinner plates and an ornate silver grill. 

 

“What do you call this?” Morse asked, stepping out onto the stoop.

 

Tony turned and looked appraisingly at the car behind him. “Bluebell,” he said smartly, unable to keep the singularly pleased note out of his voice.

 

Across the street, Morse noticed a few of the Thursdays' neighbors watching the house, and he wondered at the wisdom of having the Earl of Marston over for a visit in this working-class neighborhood. Wasn’t he supposed to be keeping a low profile? He smiled faintly and waved, and the elderly man and woman resumed their conversation, pretending as if they hadn’t noticed him.

Morse ushered Tony into the narrow hall, where he looked about curiously, like a pert and adventurous bird visiting a rather different sort of nest. Doubtless, he must have wondered how Morse had come to be living there.

Mrs. Thursday came into the hall then, ready to usher them into the dining room for a cup of tea. “Hello, then. Win Thursday,” she said, introducing herself.

“Tony,” Tony replied. Then he stopped short. “ _Thursday_ , did you say? I believe I may have met your husband.”

He looked at Morse wonderingly, and then back to Mrs. Thursday. “Is he a Detective Inspector, by any chance?”

“That’s right,” she said.

 “Yes. He came up to the house. He wanted me to help identify someone he knew only as ‘Morse’. But.... if you’re _living_ here... Why didn’t you simply tell him who you were?” 

Morse cast his face down and rubbed his hand along the curls at his nape. This was already going to prove to be impossible.

But luckily, Tony answered his own question, sparing him from coming up with some sort of believable fiction.

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Pagan. Would you not give your Christian name even to the _police_?”

Morse shrugged one shoulder, keeping his eyes cast down.

 

He _had_ only written “Morse” on the notebook Inspector Thursday had given him. It wasn’t the full story, but it wasn’t completely untrue, either. 

 

“I told him my name was Morse,” Morse murmured, defensively.

Tony sighed heavily—and he knew what he was thinking. He’d been back in his life for less than a week, and he had already caused him unnecessary worry.

He shouldn’t have called him. It was a mistake, pretending he could go back again, behaving as if he could pick up the pieces of his former life.

Mrs. Thursday looked from one to the other of them uncertainly, but said nothing. It was clear that she was not going to interfere, that she was going to leave him to tell his story if and when he was willing to tell it.

 

As soon as they were out in the car, as soon as they were alone, it started, just as Morse knew that it would.

“Christ, Pagan,” Tony said. “Five years.”

“I know,” Morse said, quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“So, where were you?”

“I really can’t say,” Morse said.

Tony snorted at that in disbelief. “Can’t say? Or won’t say?”

“I can’t say.” 

Tony looked at him doubtfully.

“I _can’t_ ,” Morse said again.

“Is it something to do with the Army? Even if you were in Intelligence, surely you’d be allowed to answer a letter once in five years.”

Morse looked down and said nothing, only slightly shook his head.

 “I thought you might . . . ,” Tony began....“At my father’s funeral. A part of me kept looking for you. He was always so fond of you. You know he always took your part in all of that sturm and drang with Susan’s mother.”

“I know,” Morse sighed. “I didn’t know about it. Or I would have been there. Truly, I would have been.”

“Didn’t _know_?” Tony said. “It was in all the papers. Were you, what? Abroad?”

 

Morse remained silent. It would have been easy to say ‘yes,’ but that would have been too much of a lie, because he hadn’t been abroad, he’d been only ten miles away the entire time, although he might as well have been on moon.

 

“I can’t say. I really can’t say,” Morse said. “Please don’t ask me about it.”

“Why not?” Tony said, sagely. “So you won’t have to lie?”

“Yes,” Morse said. 

 

Tony started the engine and pulled out of the driveway, shaking his head. “A police officer came to the house, Pagan. Asking about you. What was I to think? I hadn’t the slightest idea what had become of you. And now I find that you’re staying with his family? Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Morse said.

“What sort of answer is that?” 

Morse said nothing; he turned and looked out the window instead.

“You can tell me, you know,” Tony said. “It can’t be so very terrible if a police officer is allowing you to stay with his family.”

 

But wasn’t it? The Thursdays didn’t seem to think it was. But it _was_ his fault. Someone else would never have buckled. Jakes or Tony  . . . they would never have given up. But Morse had. He solved seemingly unsolvable equations and he didn’t ask why. He was like an automaton, like a ghost, only half alive.  He almost didn’t leave even as he stared in disbelief at the unlatched door.

 

“Yes. No. Please don’t ask me. I really would have called you, if I could have. I would have answered your letters, if I had gotten them.”

”You never got them?”

”No,” Morse said.

Tony eyed him critically. 

 

No, Tony would never understand; he was just like Jakes. He was always so certain of things, so sure of himself. And, of course, he would be: Tony had been raised from day one to take his father’s place in society, to be a part of the  workings of the world.

It _had_ been his fault. There was something within him, something broken, some weakness that that man must have seen. It never could have happened to Tony.

Tony would never have believed any of it for an instant. Morse could almost hear him now: “I say, release me at once, or I shall call the authorities.”

Oh, God. No one would ever understand it. He’d always be alone, just as alone as he had been in that room, when he used to talk to himself, when he used to talk to the numbers.

 

“Will you ever tell me the truth?” Tony asked.

 

Morse hesitated. 

 

 “Yes.” he said. “But... But not today. I just want to be back here today. I don’t want to be there,” Morse said. “Take a left at the end of this road.”

“Be back  _where_?” Tony asked in wonderment, but he turned as Morse had asked. 

“I just don’t want you to think differently of me,” Morse said. His voice was cracking again. It was going to disappear. He blinked and looked out the window.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Tony asked.

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Morse said, faintly. 

 

This was hell. Because, of course, he had wanted to call. If only it could have been that simple, as simple as it was in those dreams he had had in those early months, the dreams in which he managed to reach a phone, in which he screamed and shouted into the receiver.

Later, the dreams changed; later in his dreams, he reached a phone but he could not dial the right number. He could dial only sevens—sharp and dangerous skeletal sevens, hovering like vultures around the dial. And if a voice did by some miracle answer, he found that he couldn’t speak. He would move his mouth and strain his throat, but no words would come out, only odd guttural noises.

 

He couldn’t do this.

 

He popped the lock on the door and prepared to jump out of the car.

As Morse moved to release the handle of the door, Tony, in one deft movement, reached across and pulled it shut again. 

 

“What the hell are you doing?” Tony shouted.

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t really.” And his voice was breaking again. “I would have if I could.”

“All right, just calm down,” Tony said, consolingly, and, this time, he said it as if maybe it really _was_ all right. As if he no longer intended to push. As if Morse had reached a safe harbor. 

 

 “All right, then,” Tony said. But his face was tight with disappointment. “I just thought.... I just thought that you would have known you could come to me, if you needed help.”

 

And this was what he had hoped Tony would say—he grasped onto the words as if they were a rope leading out of the currents, leading safely to the post of the dock.

 

“I would,” Morse said, and he could breathe again, and the words came easier, because they were altogether true. “I would have done. But I couldn’t. Until today. And so I did. To see if you would help me with something.”

Tony’s looked at him, his interest clearly piqued. “And what’s that?” 

“I.... I wondered if .... I wondered if you might go on a tour with me.”

“A tour?” Tony asked, laughing. “A tour of where?”

“The Fenix factory,” Morse said. “They give public tours Wednesdays and Fridays at two.”

“The perfume factory, you mean?”

“Yes,” Morse said.

Tony shrugged and made a sigh of resignation that seemed to say, “Same old Pagan.”

”All right,” Tony said.

And it was true: it was just the dry, pedantic sort of thing he would have dragged them all to, once upon a time.

 

*******

“Welcome to Fenix Industries,” a small, bustling woman proclaimed, in a rather commanding voice. She was dressed in a smart blue suit and matching blue heels, and she waved her arms somewhat melodramatically as she spoke, her words echoing out over the hall.

A small group of visitors congregated in the large, ostentatious foyer, one with brilliant white Italian marble floors and corinthian columns that marched along  either side of the room. The tops of the high, arching windows were instilled with stained glass—blue backgrounds emblazoned with green leaves and different colored flowers—roses, orange blossoms and lavender—meant to represent, no doubt, different fragrances.

 

“The company began as a Venetian perfume house in the thirteenth century,” the tour guide said. “At that time, Venice was a flourishing center of trade and commerce. Merchants traveled to the Middle and Far East, to Asia and North Africa, seeking new spices, fragrant oils and resins.”

 

It was as if she was reading from a script. Morse looked around the hall, which was obviously designed to impress visitors, searching for hints of hallways and passageways that might lead to more private areas of the building.

 

“After his first trip to China in 1271, Marco Polo introduced several Chinese essences to the Venetians. Many names of fragrant substances and plants are documented in his travel report, _Il_ _Milione_ , commonly referred to in English as _The_ _Travels_ _of_ _Marco_ _Polo_ ,” the tour guide said. “This important historical record has recently been republished by Oxford University Press and is an interesting reference book.”

“Impressive, isn’t it?” one of the visitors, a woman with silver hair and an uncannily youthful face, said, sidling up to Tony.

 

“Quite,” Tony said.

 

The tour guide led them to the entrance of a long hall, lined with more ornate white columns, where rows of paintings hung on the deep, burgundy walls.

“Here,” the woman said, ushering them into the hall, “hang the portraits of some of our earliest founders. The jewel of the collection, is, of course, our portrait of Lorenzo Fenicio, painted by Pergalio in 1425.”

The crowd murmured appreciatively and gathered around the painting.

After just one glance at the pattern of the brushstrokes, Morse got the measure of this entire place.

“It’s a fake,” Morse said in Tony’s ear.

“A what?” Tony asked.  

 

“I said ‘it’s a fake,’” Morse said, this time more loudly. “It’s a copy.”

 

Suddenly, it seemed his voice had carried more loudly than he had meant it to, and it echoed all the way down the long hall. Somehow, through the years of silence, he must have lost the art of modulating his voice.  

Tony rolled his eyes.

“What’s that, young man?” the guide asked.

“Nothing,” Tony called. “Carry on, please.”

 

“We’ll take a brief pause so that you might examine the paintings at your leisure,” the tour guide said. “But first, are there any questions so far?”

Morse raised his hand.

“Yes, the young man in the back,” she said.

“Will we get to see any of the laboratories, on the tour?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Laboratory One is open to the public. There, you will get to view the entirety of the art of perfumery first-hand.”

“What about Laboratory Four?” Morse asked.

The woman looked at him uncertainly.

“No, my dear,” she said. “I’m afraid that laboratory is not included on the tour.”

 

He thought it was an innocent enough question, but, in retrospect, it must have sounded too specific, for she gave him a furtive look, and even Tony was looking at him as if he didn’t know what to make of him.

His first attempt at espionage, he felt, was not going well.

 

After a few minutes, the guide brought them into the next room, which held vast cases of old bottles, all of blown Venetian glass. Some of the bottles were quite unusual, even fanciful. And unlike some of the paintings, they were authentic.

It was a shame he had to go now, right when the tour was actually getting interesting. But, at the end of the room, a nondescript white door proved too tempting to resist.

“I have to go,” Morse said.

“Go where?”

“You know.”

Tony cast a look at the silver-haired woman, who was now giving him a heavy lipstick smile.

Tony returned her smile weakly; then he turned to Morse and hissed, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Do be quick about it.”

 

Morse slowly backed away from the group, then spun on his heel and headed for the white door. Once he had edged his way to it, he cast one last look over his shoulder.

The guide was distracted, bent over a glass case, pointing out a few of the pieces to an elderly couple. Morse hesitated for just a second, and then slid quietly through the door.

On the other side was a long hall, lined with rows of more doors. Morse walked along at a quick clip, as if he knew where he was going, as if he belonged there.

 

Then, at the end of the hall, there was another door. He opened it and found himself in a spacious office, where several young women sat at desks, typing and filing away papers. He was surprised to suddenly stumble upon so many people, and for a moment, he couldn’t help but pause, looking around in bewilderment.

One of the young women looked up from her typewriter and frowned at him, as if trying to place him.

 

It was enough to send him springing into motion. He walked up perfunctorily to one of the desks and looked over it, as if he had come into the room with a purpose, as if he was searching for something. He picked up a clipboard and walked on with it, through the office and to the door beyond.

 

Carrying the clipboard, Morse felt better. It was the prop he needed—it made him look as if he was just another employee going about his business.

 

In the next hall, he heard footsteps behind him, and it took every ounce of will that he had to not look back, lest he look suspicious. Mercifully, the footsteps soon faded, and then stopped with the click of an opening door. 

 

Morse hurried on until he came to a hall strewn with a line of plush, finely-woven carpets. He followed them and came to another office.

And this must be it.

It was a paneled room with white vaulted ceilings, a desk at one end, placed beneath a tall arching window, and a set of black leather sofas and chairs grouped around a glass coffee table at the other. It was just the place the head of the company might receive clients and patrons and important guests.

Morse walked wonderingly into the center of the room.

Where to begin?

 

Suddenly, he was startled by a flash of movement that flickered in the corner of his eye.

He turned with an intake of breath, but it was a false alarm. It was only the shimmer and glisten of an odd aquatic animal, sleeking its way through a large glass tank, past neon red and green plastic plants. Morse crouched down to watch the animal swim the length of its tank. Then, he noticed another glimmer—the shine of something gold in a bronze treasure chest, gleaming like the rounded edge of the coin.

He straightened and turned in a slow circle around the room, taking everything in.

 

What was it he was looking for exactly?

 

Louis and Singleton seemed almost to speak in riddles. But maybe there was craft behind their inanities —they had left it up to him in a way, hadn’t they? Not truly saying one thing or the other? If this project proved to be a disaster, they could honestly say they had played no part in it.

 

“Thomas Cromwell. Lady Jane Gray. Lopped heads of Olde England. Traitors all,” Louis had added pointedly.

“Some might say that you _owe_ us your help,” Singleton said.

 

If Morse had been helping that man for the past five years, and if that man had been colluding with the Soviets, then he was a traitor as well, although he had not known it, although he had been told he was working for Britain.  

 

Ironic, wasn’t it? Morse had never even bothered to vote, let alone dreamt of joining any political groups. 

 

“You _owe_ us your help,” Singleton said.

They were giving him a chance to redeem himself. To undo whatever it was he had done. 

If he helped them, they said, they would provide him with a false past and an honorable discharge. One, you might say— if he succeeded in being of use—that he _had_ earned. The past would be wiped clean.

And he’d have the chance to start again.

But that didn’t answer the question: why him?

 

“ _But_ _why_ _me_?” _Morse_   _asked_.

“ _You_ _know_ _what_ _you’re_ _looking_ _for_ , _don’t_ _you_?” _Louis_ _said_.

 

What did that mean, exactly? 

 

My God.

It was something of his, perhaps. One of his own works? Who better than him, in that case, to recognize it for what it was?

 

Was Fenix involved in any way with that man? But how?

 

If it was so, then suddenly, he could see the wisdom of it all. Morse could help Louis and Singleton and reclaim his own work at the same time. The two men from Special Branch, then, were not so daft as they had seemed. It was a win-win, as Tony’s father would have said.

 

The desk would be the easiest place to start. He began to make his way over, when the door opened behind him.

 

“Excuse me,” said a voice. “May I help you?”

Morse spun on the spot. There was a man there, dressed in a finely-tailored gray suit, with a mop of dark curls pushed rakishly back from his forehead.

Morse felt his heart race in his chest, so wildly that he feared the man—who could only be Sebastian Fenix—must be able to hear it, beating against his ribs.

 

“Uh,” Morse said. “I got lost. From a tour.”

“Ah,” the man said, striding into the room.

Just then, the aquatic animal flashed in its tank, catching Morse’s attention. He stood and looked at it, trying to decide what to do next.

“Remarkable creatures,” Fenix said, noticing Morse’s gaze.

“Erpetoichthys horrida,” Fenix explained. “Commonly known as the estuarine snakefish. They secrete a lethal toxin from glands on the base of the spines on their dorsal fin, which stick up when disturbed, or,” he added, after a telling pause, “ _threatened_.”

 

Morse smiled. “Goes by the name of Tiddles, presumably?”

Fenix didn’t laugh.

”That’s an unusual pet,” Morse said.

“I’m attracted to unusual things. As I suppose, are you. You’ve wandered a bit far off from the public tour route, haven’t you?” he asked.

Morse said nothing.

“Some sort of prank for RAG week, is it? I thought that generally fell during the Hilary term,” Fenix said musingly.

Morse shrugged and smiled helplessly, as if he had been caught out.

”I thought so,” Feinx said. “I noticed you and your friend on the tour and supposed as much.”

 

And right when Morse had begun to relax a bit, right as he began to see a way out, he felt his blood run cold—how was it that the man had noticed Tony?

 

Morse struggled to keep his face impassive.

“I was supposed to snag a piece of official stationery,” he said.

“To prove you’d gotten in?”

“Mmmmm,” Morse agreed. “But I got a little too curious, I suppose.”

“A fatal flaw in cats,” the man said, silkily. 

And that’s just what Fenix was. He moved much like a cat.

And he was playing cat and mouse with him. 

 

Was this really a legitimate business? Or some sort of game?

 

“What is it you _do_ here, exactly?” Morse asked.

“We make perfume. And an awful lot of money,” Fenix replied.

“Dollars and scents?” Morse quipped.

“It’s easy to mock, but to make great perfume takes genius and a nose that would shame the greatest sommelier in the world. Thankfully, I possess both.”

 

Morse winced at that—he had seen that sort of self-assurance, that sense of rightness of his own conviction, before.

 

“Well, I’m truly sorry to have disturbed you.”

The man snorted. “Truly sorry you got caught out you mean.”

“Well,” Morse said. “Yes.”

“I’d advise your little friends to go careful when it comes to poking around. It’s not well-advertised, but, since the war, Fenix has diversified into many fields.”

Morse paused. “Such as?”

“One half of this facility is a pharmaceutical research laboratory, specializing in bacteriological and virological research. Tuberculosis bovina. Foot and mouth. One of your little pranks could backfire badly, you could find yourself in some seriously hot water, Mister . . . ?”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Morse said, casting an anxious look toward the door. 

"Are you sure you won't stay a bit and have a drink?” the man said. “My secretary, Miss Borgia, mixes a martini to die for.”

"I won't, thank you," Morse stuttered. "And anyway, I don't drink. Sorry again to have disturbed you,” he finished stupidly, and he bolted out the door. 

 

Morse raced through the halls, his thoughts as fragmented as pieces of glass, like broken bits of milleflori. He could barely remember the way he had come. He would never make it back to find the tour group quickly enough for Tony not to notice how long he had gone.

One room led to another, and he was dizzy with looking over his shoulder to see if the man was following him. Or to see if someone else was watching him.

 

_We make perfume. And an awful lot of money._

 

If Fenix managed to get his hands on some of that man’s documents, ones meant for the Soviets, might he have sold them?

But how would Fenix have gotten a hold of them? Was that man working with Fenix? Or did Fenix come by them in some other way? And whom would he have sold them to? And how could he cover up such vast transfers of money?

And were these transactions somehow linked to those nine murders? 

Morse didn’t have any answers.

But at least he now had questions.

 

He wasn't quite sure where he was going; somehow he had gotten turned around in the labyrinth of offices and halls. He came out, at, last, back to where he had begun his detour--in the room filled with sparkling Venetian glass bottles. But by then, of course, the tour had moved on.

 

Tony would be livid. And he had every right to be.

 

He wished he had never called Tony now. He never would have brought him here, if he had known what a sinister place this was. He felt almost ill with the thought of what he had done.

 

What was that poor trapped creature guarding? And Miss _Borgia_? As in Lucretia Borgia? A martini to _die_ for? Was that some sort of threat?

 

For the second time in the space of a half hour, Morse found himself revising his opinion of Louis and Singleton. _Take_ _a_ _tour_? What had they been playing at?

It was a terrible place, for all of its beauty. There was something deceptive here, something dangerous.

 

No. For all that Morse felt over his head, from now on, he would have to operate alone.

 

Morse saw a small sign with an arrow, pointing to the gift shop. Wasn't that precisely where all such tours ended? Wasn’t it almost half the point of them?

Morse sped along the hall, and, sure enough, there was Tony, milling about the glass shelves, while the elderly ladies on the tour shopped with enthusiasm. One of them was holding up her wrist to Tony, as if asking his opinion, when Tony caught sight of him. He widened his eyes at him alarmingly. Morse hastened over. 

 

“I’m sorry. I never should have brought you here,” Morse said, casting one last look behind him as they left the gift shop.   

Tony snorted. “I’ll say you shouldn’t,” he said. “I’ve had to dodge two marriage proposals. I think, actually, that it’s quite possible that I might be engaged.”

 

"Can we go for a pint now?” Tony asked. “Or, I mean, for a pint and a Squash?" 

"We can go for a pint," Morse said. "I drink now." 

Tony quirked an eyebrow at him, “Since when?”

“Since right now,” Morse said.

 *************

 

At the pub, Tony filled the silences readily enough, getting him up to date on the happenings of the past five years. Bruce and Kay were married. Bruce was still Bruce; Kay was some sort of fashion model now. Bunny was the manager of a bank, of all things. Pippa was working for a magazine.

Meanwhile, Morse worked through his ale, sinking into that same fuzzy warmness he had felt at the pub garden with Inspector Thursday. By the time Tony made his way to sharing his news of Susan, Morse was comfortably numb.

“Susan . . .well, Susan and Henry married. A few years back now.”

“Mmmm,” Morse said, and took another draught. It didn’t hurt at all.

 

By the time he folded himself back into Tony’s glitzy Egyptian blue automobile, Morse felt as if everything had drawn back, as if he was viewing this strange new world from a safe distance. He looked out the window meditatively.

 “Oh, look at that,” he said, at last.

“What?” Tony asked.

“The manager at Richardson’s. Mr. Anderson. He corrected those signs.”

Tony regarded him, one eyebrow raised. “Well, thank heavens,” he laughed.  

He flicked him a look before returning his eyes to the road. “There’s a fair tonight. At Lake Silence. All the old crowd is going to be there. Would you like to come out?”

“Oh,” Morse said. “That. I’m already going to that. With Joan and Sam and their group.”

“Who are Joan and Sam?” Tony asked.

“The Thursdays’ son and daughter.”

“Oh,” Tony said, and there was an odd distance in the syllable.

“I’m sure we’ll see you there,” Morse said. “We can make up a larger group.”

“All right,” Tony said, although he could hear the uncertainty in his voice: after all, town was town and gown was gown and never the twain shall meet. Although surely this is what it would have been like anyway, if none of that had happened, if he really had just joined with the army—him slipping back into his natural place, away from the others.

 

“I just. . . .” Tony began. “Just don’t disappear again. All right?”  

 

Morse looked out the window. Because who knew exactly what he was getting himself into?

What he wanted to say was, “If I do, please know that I didn’t do it on purpose. If I do, will you look for me?”

 

But might that alone lead Tony into the middle of this—whatever this was? If he followed his trail, might he follow him into the same danger?

 

So instead, he said simply smiled and said, “I won’t.”

 

***************

 

Morse had to admit—he thought Inspector Thursday was daft, speaking of rear-view mirrors. But perhaps he had a point.

He would have thought that he would have hated it, the fair. But it turned out that the Inspector was right. It was brilliant.

It was like looking through a kaleidoscope of color and light after years of seeing only clinical white.

There were red and green and blue lights, buzzing with electricity against the black sky. There was the overpowering, sweet scent of candy floss, pink as clouds at sunset, glowing under kiosk lights. The heady scent of beer, the sharp salt of popcorn, as if they were at the seaside.

There was that awful jarring sort of music—the sort that Joan was so fond of—but there was, he had to admit, a pulse to it, a heartbeat that wasn’t the worst accompaniment to the calls of friends greeting friends and the delighted screams of the people who zoomed past in a swoosh on the brightly-lit rotating and plunging and twisting carnival rides.

 

After years of silence and the skeletal sevens on the wall, it was as if someone had flipped a switch.

 

Joan spotted her favorite ride and made a beeline for it, calling for the others to follow. Morse ended up in a yellow cart with her, in one right behind Sam and Janie.

When Joan snapped the bar down across their laps, Morse felt a surge of panic—he hated it suddenly, he hated feeling penned in—but then the ride began, and he felt just the opposite. The wind was in his hair and he was tossed about like a leaf in a gust, and he was free, and he could fly, and he could go anywhere.

He held on to the bar tighter as the ride accelerated, and he was leaving it all far behind him. And then the ride lurched forward, as if they might go flying off into the stars, and Joan let out a scream and then laughed. It was all a matter of centrifugal forces, Morse knew, but, for the moment, he managed to forget about the theory and feel only the wind.

In the cart ahead, Janie was shrieking, and Sam reached back and put his arm around her.

Whoever would have imagined that Sam might be so smooth?

Morse turned and looked at Joan, whose dark hair was flying, and he could tell she was thinking the exact same thing; the moment their eyes met, they burst out laughing.

When they got off, Morse felt as if his head was spinning. As if the lights were spinning, as if what stars that could compete with the lights were spinning.

 

“Win me something?” Janie said.

“All right,” Sam said, seeming to puff out his chest. And by some sort of common agreement, the group turned to the row of kiosks with yellow and red awnings that housed the carnival games.  

 *******

Morse recognized the group at the shooting game in the space of a heartbeat—with the oddest swooping feeling of déjà vu.

 “Pagan!” Bruce called. “Tony said you would be here.” He turned to Tony, “Where the hell did you say you found him?”

“In Headington,” Tony said.

Bruce laughed, but Kay seemed to be scrutinizing him, her eyes narrowed.

“You haven’t changed at all,” she said.

Joan and Sam, meanwhile exchanged doubtful glances, most likely in regards to his nickname.

“So, what have you been up to?  No one from the old gang has seen you for ages. You never were the clubbable type,” Bruce said.

“Oh, this and that,” Morse said.

“But not much of the other, eh? Same old Pagan. Still falling for the wrong girl too, I bet? Always thought too much. That was your problem.”

 

And what to say? Because Bruce was actually right. All he _had_ been doing was thinking.

 

“Watch out there, Tony,” Bruce said, suddenly.

Morse looked to Tony, then. A woman of forty or so, in an elegant coat, was eyeing him as she passed.

Tony turned away, his eyes wide, while the girls and Bunny laughed.

“There goes another likely one for you,” Bunny said. “A bit long in the tooth for my tastes, but she looks like she’s got a bit of money.”

Kay must have noticed Morse’s confusion, that he was not understanding the joke, because she turned to him and said, “Some woman’s magazine has done a piece on Britain’s most eligible bachelors. Our Tony has made the list, I’m afraid.”

Tony shook his head in dismay. “It’s not funny, really. I think I might be engaged to some woman I met while I was waiting for Pagan at the Fenix gift shop.”

“Fenix? What were you doing there?” Joan laughed.

“I think I might want to work there. I picked up a bit of chemistry,” Morse invented wildly.

“Since when?” Bunny laughed, while Tony looked at him, his brow furrowed.

 

Thank God that Bruce never liked to surrender the spotlight for long. Because, at that moment, he picked up the rifle with a swagger, and said, “Now, children, let me show you how it’s done.”

He leveled the rifle and proceeded to shoot at a row of paper targets one by one, with a series of small pops. 

“Five out of six,” the man at the booth called out, as Bruce lowered the rifle.

“What?” Bruce cried. “Are you sure?”

 

“Why don’t you give it a go, Pagan,” Pippa said, handing him the rifle.

 

“Pagan?” he heard Joan murmur wonderingly.

 

Morse took it and looked the barrel of the gun over. It had been hammered, dented a bit on the left, so that it would not shoot straight, so that it would pull to the right. The thing to do, then, was to aim left.

The carnival worker noticed him look, and a small flicker of dismay passed over his face, but then he looked resigned.

Morse crouched down and aimed at the first target.  

 

“Since when are you left handed?” Tony asked.

 

But Morse didn’t answer. He focused on the first target. And then he began to hit each of the targets in a steady row.

“I do believe he’s got you, Bruce,” Tony said.

Bruce made a face as though he were in pain. He never could bear to lose even the smallest thing.

 

“What’s for the face card?” Morse asked.  

“That’s the big prize,” the man behind the counter said.

 

Morse hit the King of Spades, and the card popped down. The man at the booth reached up and lazily pulled down a large stuffed tiger. Kay looked as if she would like to seize upon it, doubtless with some accompanying barb to Bruce, but Morse had found himself in the middle of their battles far too often, so he quickly passed it off to Joan.

“Would you like it?” Morse asked.

She laughed, “Why not?” she said. “Dad _did_ tell us to bring home a goldfish. This is a little easier to care for, I suppose.”  

Sam, meanwhile, was looking crestfallen. Morse realized, too late, that perhaps he had made a tough act to follow.

 

Morse leaned forward and whispered in Sam’s ear. “It pulls to the right.”

“What?” Sam blurted, bewildered.

“It pulls to the right,” Morse repeated. “Aim a bit to the left.”

Sam appeared to mull this over. Then he took the rifle in his hand, and, following Morse’s advice, managed to hit every target.

The carnival worker narrowed his eyes at Morse and pulled another tiger down out of the rafters of the kiosk, handing it to Sam.

Janie threw his arms around him and kissed him. Joan made a face as if she were a bit nauseated.

“C’mon,” Sam announced proudly. “I’ll buy everyone a drink.”

Joan and Sam’s group cheered at that news and headed off, and for a moment, Morse wasn’t sure which way to go.

Then, he decided that he had better go with Sam. Sam had been spending money like water the entire night, all to impress Janie no doubt, and Morse thought that he had better slip him the five pounds Inspector Thursday had given him, so that he wouldn’t come up short at the beer tent and have to forgo on his promise.

He nodded a goodbye to Tony and the others, allowing himself to be herded off with Joan and her friends.

 

“Our neighbor is having a party tomorrow night,” Bruce called after him, “We’ll dig you out, have some bloody fun. Tony can come round for you since he knows where to find you.” 

Bruce turned to Tony, who looked doubtful. And with just cause. Typically, Morse would rather be boiled in oil than to attend such a party, but, this time, he felt he hadn’t the heart not to go along, considering he was leaving them here so soon.

“All right,” Morse said. “Is that all right with you, Tony?”

Tony looked surprised. “Sure. I’ll pick you up at nine.”

“All right,” Morse said again. “Until tomorrow, then.” And then he followed after the others.

 

It seemed odd, but he felt as if he belonged with them more than with his own friends, despite the fact that was 26 now. Or so he supposed. 

But then, he had always lacked the veneer of sophistication that his friends wore so easily— and now, they had seemed somehow to have left him even further behind.

Joan, on the other hand, was only 22 and Sam 19, but, then again, on the last birthday that Morse remembered, he was turning 21. So there was that.

Would he ever make up all that lost time?

 

As the group made its way over to the beer tent, Morse paused. There was something decidedly odd, there, over by the carousel.

Amidst the roving, chattering crowds, a man stood alone, perfectly still, as if he was waiting for something. Or someone. His dark hair was slicked back from his face, and—despite the darkness—he was wearing a pair of Italian sunglasses.

 

Then a young couple passed by, blocking him momentarily from view.

And, when they had passed, the man had completely disappeared.

 

Morse frowned, and Joan tugged on his arm.

“Come on,” she said. “We’ll lose them in this crowd.”

They hurried over, walking around another large group, until they joined Sam and the others in the queue.

“Ladies first”, Sam said, gallantly. Janie and her friend Trudy giggled.

Joan rolled her eyes.

 

They were standing for only a few moments, when Joan screamed.

Morse’s heart jumped to his throat. For it wasn’t the scream she had cried out when the carnival ride had lurched forward, sending them flying. It wasn’t a scream tinged with excitement—but rather one of terror.

It was just like that night.

Morse looked down to see that her coat was splashed with red. Directly in front of her, a man was toppling. Morse grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him. And it was just like before, just like that night, someone was falling, falling into him. This time, he knew it was coming, and he stumbled back, pushing Joan further behind him.

 

And then the man fell, dead at their feet, his eyes wide and glassy, reflecting the carnival lights.

 

Around them, the crowd was roaring in panic. Morse kept his hands on Joan’s shoulders so that she would not get pushed over.

“Police!” a voice called. “Let me through.”

 

“Oh,” the large uniformed officer said, when he saw them. “It’s you Joanie. What happened?”

But Joan’s eyes were wide with shock; she seemed temporarily robbed of speech. 

The constable took in the sight of the bloodied dead man before them, and his eyes swerved to Morse.

“It’s ... It’s Morse, isn’t it?” he asked.

Morse nodded.

“Constable Strange,” he said. “Oxford City Police. Did you see anything?”

“No,” Morse said, slowly. “It was just like that other time, though. There wasn’t any sound.”

If the constable somehow knew who he was, he must work with Inspector Thursday, and he must—Morse imagined— know just what “other time” he meant.

“There wasn’t any sound. No sound of a gun shot. The man just fell over,” Morse explained.

“Did you see anyone? Anyone at all?”

Morse remembered the man, then, the one that was standing alone, waiting.

“There was a man just there,” Morse said, pointing to the place where the man had stood. “With dark hair and sunglasses. Just standing. It was if he was waiting for someone.”

Constable Strange made a thoughtful face.

“Did he look anything like . . . “ he began, letting the sentence fall away euphemistically. “The gunman?”

Again, Morse knew just what he meant.  

“No,” Morse said. “Nothing like him.”

Constable Strange nodded. “Wait here. I’ll have to call this in.”

 *****

Thursday was just getting ready to leave the station when the duty sergeant called.

“Constable Strange just radioed in. There’s been a shooting over at the fair. Do you want me to call in Jakes? He’s on duty.”

Thursday stopped still in his tracks, taking this information in. 

“No,” he said, tersely. “I’ll go. My kids are at that thing.”

He picked his hat up off the desk and, in a flash of dark greatcoat, he was gone.

*******

Somehow, he knew—whether it was his fatherly instinct or a copper’s one— he just had the feeling they might be in the middle of it all.

And sure enough, in the shadows of the colored lights, he spotted them right away, standing beside a tent—the fiery head of hair between the two glossy, dark ones.

Morse looked up as he approached and watched him solemnly. He looked weary, as if he had seen it all before.

Which, of course, Thursday supposed, he had.

Sam and Joan were looking round-eyed, absolutely stunned. Blood was splattered across Joanie’s light summer coat.

More than anything, he wanted them out of here.

“Did you talk to Constable Strange?” Thursday asked.

 

They all three of them stared at him for a moment, bewilderedly.

 

“Yes,” Morse said, at last.

 It was an odd reversal—his two cheerful chatterboxes stunned into silence, leaving Morse to speak for the group.

Morse looked from them to him. It was an odd look. There was something sorrowful there, as if Morse was feeling a bit sorry for him.  

Thursday wasn’t the sort of man who was accustomed to finding himself on the end of such a look.

“Well, you tried,” Morse’s expression seemed to say. “But I could have told you, you couldn’t keep them behind the hat stand forever.”

Thursday sighed.

“Take them home, Morse,” he said.

Morse said nothing, only nodded. He placed one hand on each of their shoulders and quietly steered Joan and Sam away from where Dr. DeBryn was already kneeling beside the bloody corpse.

It was the tenth in Oxfordshire within the space of a week.  

And Thursday hadn’t even the slightest lead, not one idea as to what to make of it. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Thursday’s most awkward parenting moment ever...  
> Thanks so much for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

 

Thursday watched Morse, Joan and Sam head off through the darkness before turning to where Dr. DeBryn knelt beside the body of a young man.

 

The fair was deserted now, the hulking mechanical rides ground to a halt, lying in the shadows like sleeping armored dragons. The electric lights of blue and red and green now gave the place an eerie, otherworldly air, rather than an enchanted glow. Paper popcorn bags and candy floss cones blew forlornly over the summer grass, abandoned and forgotten, much like the shorn feathers of a slain dove, like the papers that drifted over the nine corpses in Clive Durrell's study. 

 

Thursday stepped forward and took a good look at the body. Late twenties, early thirties. Medium build, square jaw, wavy ash blond hair. 

“Do we have any idea who he was?” Thursday asked.

“Erik Rebmann, according to his passport,” DeBryn said crisply. “West German. Here on a student visa.”

“Up at Oxford then?”

“Hmmmm,” DeBryn said.

Thursday turned his head and considered the man’s face. “Looks a bit on the older side for an undergrad,” he mused.

“Date of birth, fifth of November, 1936,” DeBryn replied. “Must be a postgraduate student of some sort. Address, on the visa, given as 12 Appleton Drive.”

 

Just then, Sergeant Jakes came striding through the shadows to stand alongside him.

“What’s this, then?” he asked.

“ _Who_ this is, then, is Erik Rebmann,” Dr. DeBryn corrected.

“West German,” Thursday said.

“German?” Jakes said. “This hasn’t anything to do with that other case, then, has it? We’ll have Special Branch swooping in like a hawk.”

 

PC Strange, who was standing, arms folded, stolidly beside a tent pole, flicked an uncertain look at them.

 

“No one I spoke to reported hearing any sound of a gun shot,” he said.  “A few people in the queue behind Rebmann said they just felt it—the splatter of blood—and then he fell backwards into the crowd. Caused a bit of a panic, it seems. No one could tell just what was happening in the confusion.”

“A silencer, maybe? Just like in the case at Lonsdale?” Thursday mused. “Could the bullets be a match?”

“Straight off, I can tell you he was shot at fairly close range. I’ll have futhers and betters tomorrow. Shall we say one o’clock?” DeBryn said, closing his field kit with a click. He rose, then, without any further word to anyone, and strode off into the darkness, back to where his Morris was parked in the mud.

 

“Close range,” Thursday said. “Anybody in the crowd see anything? Anyone?”

“No. Not really,” Strange said. “There was a lot of pushing and shoving in the queue, evidently. Might have been a bit from the gunman, making his way through?”

Strange looked as if he was about to add something more, but, then, he hesitated.

 

“Constable?” Thursday prompted.

“Morse said . . .” Strange began . . . “He said that he saw a man standing alone, over by the carousel. Dark hair, medium build, sunglasses, brown suede jacket. He said it struck him as odd, that he should be standing so still amidst the crowds. It was as if he was waiting for someone, he said.”

“So?” Thursday said, perplexed by Strange’s look of concern. “What do you make of it?”

“Well, that’s just it, sir. I interviewed a good twenty other people, and no one else noticed any such person. Not even your Joan and Sam, who were walking with him. I wasn’t sure what credence to give to his report. You don’t think he’s . . . _affected,_ do you? I mean . . . ” and here, Strange lowered his voice, in an uncharacteristically melodramatic manner. “I mean. . . .  _Five_ _years_.”

Jakes pulled the cigarette from his lips and blew a stream of smoke into the night air. “Well, if Morse saw it, it’s likely to be so. Perhaps no one else noticed it. The man notices incorrect apostrophes in grocer’s signs, for God’s sakes.”

“What’s this?” Thursday asked.

“When I found him, outside of Richardson’s, he was complaining about the signs in the window,” Jakes explained. “I couldn’t get him to come along with me in the car. He was right worked up about it.”

Thursday shook his head in disbelief. The manager of Richardson’s had told him that Morse had asked to speak to him about the signs when he had gone in for the eggs. But Jakes had found him a good two hours later, after his involuntary detour. Was Morse still fretting about those signs, then, even after his misadventure with Special Branch?

 

The lad was as tenacious as a bulldog.

 

Thursday mulled over what Strange had said.

“Doesn’t sound like the man Morse reported seeing by the carousel was the Lonsdale gunman, though,” Thursday said. “Morse said that the gunman was fairly large, with cropped, fair hair.”

“Yes, sir,” Strange said. “Morse didn’t think he was the gunman. He just thought it was odd, I suppose.”

“Hmmmm. Well. We’ll have to see what Dr. DeBryn can tell us about the bullet tomorrow. But I don’t like this. A man feels brazen enough to come into the fair and kill someone at close range amidst hundreds of witnesses? We either have a madman on our hands, or a professional. Either way, I want him found.”

He turned to Jakes. “Bring the Jag around and collect me tomorrow at half nine. We’ll head over to Rebmann’s lodgings.”

“Sir,” Jakes said.

 

*********

 

“Morse?”

Morse opened his eyes and blinked slowly.  And it was all right. The walls were covered in trees and diving birds and dreams of clouds, and not equations, and not skeletal sevens. A summer breeze was coming in through the open window, and a tree stood just outside, its leaves rustling with the wind. If he ever really needed to, he could go out the window and down the tree and be outside, free, on the ground, in thirty seconds.

 

“Morse?”

 

Morse sat up. It was Joan, in a quilted pink dressing gown, standing uncertainly outside of the door.

 

“Are you awake?”

 

He was tempted to make a joke, as she herself was so oft to do. “ _Well, I am now,_ ” he was about to say. But he could hear the fear in her voice, the worry, so he simply said, “Yes.”

 

She ventured into the room. “I can’t sleep,” she said. “I can’t stop . . . I can’t stop seeing that man. I could . . . I could feel the warmth of it, all the way through my coat.”

Morse sat up and frowned. There was no need to say what she meant by "it." He knew the feeling all too well.

He pulled his knees up, as she crossed the room, making a space for her to sit at the foot of the bed.

 

“I know,” he said, as she sank down across from him. “I felt the same way.”

 

She clasped her hands in her lap and looked over at him, her dark blue eyes solemn, suddenly older, in the dim, shadowed light. “What did you do?” she asked.

Morse shrugged one shoulder and lowered his head, brushing at the curls at his nape. “I think . . . I think I might have passed out at some point, actually. So, you see, you’re already doing better than I did.” He laughed softly, but this small instance of humor did nothing to soften her stoic expression.  

 

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry that had to happen.”

 

“Little old for clambering into each other’s rooms during thunderstorms, aren’t we?” Sam asked from the doorway.

Joan looked up at him. “That wasn’t a thunderstorm, Sam,” she said.

 

Sam sighed as if to concede her the point, and stepped into the room.

 

“Mum says she can get the stains out, and my coat will be right as rain,” Joan said. “But I don’t want to wear it anymore, that coat. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling.”

 

She shuddered, and Sam came in to sit beside her; Morse bunched up further against the headboard, so that he was sitting crosslegged, to give Joan room to make a place for Sam. 

 

“I don’t know what happened to the shirt I was wearing,” Morse said. “It had a hole in it anyway, I suppose. From the bullet. They probably threw it out. At hospital.”  

 

Sam frowned.

 

“What is it?” Joan asked.  

“As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to go into the Army. Dad’s never been too keen. Wants me to be the one to break away, do something different. Be a banker or a solicitor, or who knows what. But there was always just a rightness about it that appealed, a certainty.”

“And now?” Morse asked.  

“I don’t know,” Sam said, thoughtfully. “Death is. . . well, it’s different from what I thought it would be. That bloke didn’t look . . . well, he didn’t look much older than us, really. And here we all are, and. . .”

“And he’s not,” Morse concluded.

“It’s just . . not so simple as I would have thought,” Sam said.

“No,” Morse agreed. “Nothing ever is.”

 

They sat in silence for a time, then, aware that they were all thinking of the same thing, but none of them having the words to say anything more about it.

 

“You lot all right?”

Morse looked up to see Inspector Thursday in the doorway.

“Yes,” Joan said. “We were just talking.”

“Hmmmm," Thursday said. "Anything you want to talk to me about?” 

Joan and Sam exchanged looks.

“No, Dad,” Sam said.

“Best get to bed, then. You two have work in the morning, and Morse is coming in to look at lineups with me at eleven.”

 

Joan and Sam scrambled up at his words, and, with the shifting of their weight, the mattress floated beneath him like water.

 

As they left, Inspector Thursday remained in the doorway for a moment. Then he nodded to him, in what Morse recognized as a gesture of gratitude.

Morse had admitted to Joan and Sam that he had once, also, been afraid.

And it had spared Thursday from needing to have that conversation—from having to admit that he sometimes was, too.

 

So, the hat stand was tottering a bit. But, for now, Inspector Thursday would remain their invincible father, the solver of all things.

For a little while longer, at least.

Morse wasn’t quite sure if he agreed with Thursday on this.

Children had to grow up.

But perhaps not so soon, or so abruptly.

It must be wonderful, after all, to venture out into the world, knowing that there’s a net to catch you if you fall.

 

Any such assurances that Morse had ever held ended with the thud of dirt on a coffin when he was twelve years old.

 

**************

 

Thursday woke to the sound of movement, like a scuttling of mice.

Were those ruddy kids still awake? They had seemed calm enough after their tete-a-tete in Morse’s room, and they all had work in the morning.

Thursday padded down to the room at the end of the hall, where the door, as always, stood half-open. And then, he froze in his tracks.

 

In the small bedroom, Morse was standing, his face feverish with concentration as he wrote across the painted wall, his left hand moving over the twisting branches and vibrant birds, leaving a seemingly endless chain of formulas and equations in its wake.

 

“Morse?”

 

But Morse kept writing, as if Thursday was not there. It was uncanny, the speed at which the pencil scratched across the wall.

 

“Morse!”

 

Morse startled and stared at him.

 

“What are you doing with this, now?” he asked, with a nod to the wall.

 

He looked at him blankly for a moment, and then, following the direction of Thursday’s nod, he turned to look at his painting.

 

Morse dropped the pencil with a clatter and inhaled sharply. Then, he covered his nose and mouth with his hands, so that only his wide blue eyes—bright in the sliver of light from the hall—were visible, as he looked in horror at what he had done.

He took a few steps backward until he backed into the bed. Then his knees gave way and he collapsed onto the mattress, still looking at the formulas trailing across the wall.

 

“Morse?” Thursday asked, uncertainly.

 

Behind the mask made by his long, narrow hands, Morse let out a low, keening wail.

There was an unearthliness about it that made Thursday’s heart jump, and, in a moment, he heard it: the rest of the household stirring, awakened by the sound.

 

In a just a few strides, Thursday crossed the room to Morse.

“Morse,” he said. 

 

But Morse paid him no attention; he seemed transfixed by the numbers, and he broke into another low wail.

 

Thursday sat down next to him and put his arm around one bony shoulder, giving him one gentle, grounding shake.

Morse turned to him, lowering his hands, then, and his mouth moved soundlessly, as if he were gulping for air. Then, finally, a few guttural sounds came out. He shook his head in frustration.

 

“Take your time, lad,” Thursday said.

 

In the corner of his eye, he noticed the others had gathered in the doorway.

 

Finally, Morse seemed to find his voice. “I’ve ruined it!” he cried.

 

Then, he buried his face in his hands and succumbed to silent sobs, his shoulders shaking.

 

“Morse,” Thursday said. “It’s not ruined. It’s only pencil. It will wash right off.”

“But I’ll know it’s there. I’ll always know they were there. Just like Joan’s jacket,” he said, from behind his hands.

“What?” Thursday said, with a glance to Joan. But Joan only shook her head solemnly.  

“Well,” said Thursday, considering the dreamworld of trees and blowing grasses on the wall. Then he smiled encouragingly. “I don’t think that you’ll think of those numbers at all. I think there’s a lot else to look at, to be honest.”  

That proved to be a mistake; it just sent him sobbing all the harder. It was eerie, the way he sat shaking, absolutely silent.

 

Win half-rolled her eyes at his failed attempt at humor and came into the room then, clutching her hand to the folds of her dressing gown.  

She stepped back, surveying the marks on the wall. “There’s no need to fret so, Morse,” she said, consolingly. “I can get that right off.”

 

But Morse kept on as if he had not heard her.

 

Joan and Sam, in the meanwhile, stood looking stunned, uncharacteristically subdued.  Morse had been their rock only a few hours earlier, and now he was sitting before them, coming apart at the seams.

 

And then the answer came to him.

 

“No, Win,” said Thursday, quietly. “Just leave it.”

“But _Fred_ ,” she said, cajolingly, as Morse continued to shake, his face buried.

“No,” Fred said. “You’re not going to clean it off.”

 

He paused, then, and nodded his head toward Morse. “He will,” he said.

 

Morse took a gasping breath at that. He kept his face hidden, but it was clear, at least, that he had gotten his attention, that Morse was listening.

 

“Do you not want that on your painting then?” Thursday said. “Those numbers?”

 Morse, his face still hidden, shook his head.

“All right. I’ll go get a rag, and you can be the one to wipe it off, how’s that then?”

 

For a moment, Morse was still.

Then he nodded.

“All right,” Thursday said. “Just wait here.”

Morse nodded again.

 

Thursday went to the door, nodding his  head to the others as he went. They took the hint, and, one by one, they wandered back to their rooms.

 

Thursday went into the kitchen, where he took a rag from the rag bin and a bottle of cleaner out from under the sink.

 

When he returned, Morse was still in the same place, sitting on the bed, his hands over his nose and mouth, but his eyes, now, were visible again, over the tops of his fingers.

 

Thursday stood before him, holding out the bottle and the rag.

Morse rose and took them tentatively and then went to the wall. He turned and looked at Thursday over his shoulder, uncertainly. Thursday nodded for him to go ahead.

He began slowly, with a few looks back over his shoulder, as if he were expecting a reprimand, and then he began to work more in earnest, wiping furiously at the walls.

 

"I don't care if I finish this or not," Morse said mutinously. 

Thursday had to suppress a snort. The lad certainly was preaching to the choir, in this case. He, Thursday, certainly didn't much care, either, if he "finished" that rubbish or not. 

 

He'd be grateful for a decent night's sleep, as a matter of fact. 

 

“Mind the paint,” Thursday said. “You can touch it up tomorrow if it’s faded, I suppose.”

Morse erased the last numbers, 338798 to the third power over pi, and then stepped back, as if considering his work.

 

“Better?” Thursday asked.

“Yes,” Morse said, softly.

 

“I think so, too,” Thursday said. “Never had much of a head for numbers, to be honest. Joan and Sam were both better students than I was. I used to skive off, when I got the chance, to go play football. But not them. I was glad of it. Always hoped they might find something better.”

Morse was watching him, his face considering. “Fathers do, I suppose.”

“Hmmm,” Thursday agreed.

“Sam wants to join the army,” Morse said, coming back to sit on the edge of the bed.  

“Yeah,” Thursday conceded. “Well. I’ll not stand in his way, when it comes to it. I just wanted something different for him, that’s all. Didn’t want him to feel he had to follow in his old man’s footsteps.”

He turned to Morse. It was best, he thought, to get him talking about something else for a while, to get his mind off of those numbers.  “What about you, then?" he asked."You still keen on the police?”

“Yes,” Morse said.

“Sam told me you helped him win the big prize for Janie,” Thursday said.

“Yes,” Morse said.

“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

Morse shrugged. “It’s just a game,” he said dismissively.

“Not much different from a range test, I’d imagine. And from what Sam said, it didn’t seem like they were exactly giving away the big prizes.” 

 

 “It’s all just angles, isn’t it?” Morse asked. “Basic geometry?”

“Hmmmmm,’ Thursday said. He would bet there was a little more to it than that, but Morse made it clear that was all he was planning to say on the subject, and Thursday had learned all too well that Morse wasn’t one to speak if he didn’t want to.

“I suppose I could talk to Mr. Bright, or to my old friend DI Church. You’d spend two years as a probationary constable, you know that, don’t you?”

"Yes."

"You won’t mind? You won’t be bored?" 

 

Morse cut him a withering look. He’d been confined to one floor of a house for five years, after all.

 

Thursday laughed gently. “Well. Still seems an odd choice. You could be doing much more important things, I’d hazard,” Thursday said.

"I don’t know what’s more important," Morse said. "When I think of, well, how you made me feel when I was in hospital. I just . . .  I wish I could help other people feel like that, I suppose."

 

Thursday didn’t know quite what to say. There were so many times that he felt that he would never understand the lad, but on this point, he did.

 

"There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?" Morse asked, his eyes searching his face, uncertain. It was the same look he had in that long-ago photograph he had seen in Tony Donn's album, the hesitancy clear beneath his reserved expression.

 "Not at all," Thursday said.

And again, Thursday wasn't quite sure what else to say, so he let the silence fall between them, and—despite the fact that he had known the lad for not even a week—it was a good silence, a companionable silence, like the silence that falls between two old friends who sit at a table beside a roaring fire, over two pints of dark ale. 

 

******

 

“We’re here, sir,” Jakes said.

“Sir?”

Thursday rubbed his eyes wearily with the thumb and forefinger of one hand.

“Sorry, Sergeant,” Thursday said. “Bit of a late night last night, I’m afraid. Morse was up all hours, trying to recreate a bit of those papers again, I suppose.”

 

Jakes shook his head, in disbelief.

 

“So,” Thursday said. “This is where Erik Rebmann was lodging, was it?”

“It’s the address DeBryn said was on his student visa, yes, sir.”

“All right, then,” Thursday said. “Let’s see what we turn up.”

****

The landlady was an older woman with a crown of curling white hair. She put her hand to her throat when she heard the news, running her fingers along the tasteful string of small pearls that lay there, as if finding comfort in the smooth texture of the beads.

“Oh, dear,” she breathed. “He was such a nice, quiet young man. Ever so polite. What a terrible thing.”

“We’d like to see his rooms, please, Mrs....?”

“Mrs. Lauer. Yes. Of course. Please. Right this way.”

 

She led them up a narrow stair lined with red carpet to a modest bedroom at the top of the landing. It looked fairly nondescript. Narrow, four-poster bed, a desk, a dresser, a wardrobe, one small window, beige and white patterned wall paper, a well-worn, but quality wool rug. Over the dresser, hung a fine print of about one foot tall and three feet long. It was a seascape, a depiction of a harbor full of tall ships.

“That’s new,” the landlady said. “That must have belonged to Herr Rebmann.”

Thursday took it down from the hook. 

 

"He was a student, then?" Thursday asked. "Rebmann?" 

 

“That’s right,” Mrs. Lauer said. “He was from Stuttgart. He was a postgraduate, writing a paper on Bertrand Russell. It was why he wanted to come to Oxford to study, he said.”

“Hmmm,” Thursday said.

He flipped the painting over. There was an inscription on the back. _The Spanish Armada anchored off the coast of Calais. 1588._ The word _Armada_ had been underlined, softly, in pencil.

 

A pile of books by Bertrand Russell lay on top of the desk, largely untouched and pristine. In one drawer, Thursday found a book written in German. He flipped slowly through it, until he found that one line had been underlined in pencil, lightly, almost as an afterthought, just as the word _Armada_ on the back of the painting.

_Ich liebe den Verrat, aber ich hasse den Verräter._

Thursday took the book and the painting.

 

Rebmann might have known he was being tailed, then. He knew he might not live to deliver whatever information that he had. 

These words were his back-up plan. He felt sure it was Rebmann’s attempt to send some sort of message.

 

If only Thursday knew what it meant.

*****

Back at the house, Morse was sitting quietly in his chair in the corner, freshly washed and pressed, drinking a cup of tea and showing every sign of having just woken up.

“Good morning,” Thursday said.

“Morning,” Morse replied, completely missing the sarcasm in Thursday’s tone.

“Are you ready for the off, then?”

“Yes,” Morse said. “We won’t be long, will we?”

“Why?” Thursday asked. “Have you something on?”

“I’m going to some party tonight.  At Lake Silence. With Tony. At nine,” Morse said.

“Oh,” Thursday replied. "Well. That’s good, that’s good. Catching up with your old friends, are you?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, lad,” Thursday said, “I’ll have you back long before nine.”

 Morse said nothing in reply, but, for some reason, he seemed a bit ambivalent about Thursday’s answer.

 

****

 

As soon as they got into the station, Jakes was waiting for them.

“Mr. Bright wants to talk to you,” he said.

“What? Now? We’ve got the lineups at eleven.”

Jakes shrugged.

“All right,” Thursday sighed. He nodded to Morse, “Go ahead and wait in my office.”

Morse looked uncertain, but headed off, just the same.

 

Thursday watched until he had closed the door behind him before going to knock softly on Mr. Bright’s half-open office door.

 

“Thursday,” Mr. Bright said, gesturing for him to have a seat in the black leather chair that stood before his large desk. “I’ve just had a call from Special Branch.”

Thursday came around and sat, even though he had a feeling he and Mr. Bright wouldn’t be having a terribly long conversation. “Oh? What about?” Thursday asked.

“It seems they went to Erik Rebmann’s room this morning and found that you and Sergeant Jakes had already been there.”

“Yes,” Thursday conceded. “He was murdered last night, at the fair.”

“It seems the landlady told them you took a book and a painting from his room.”  

“Yes,” Thursday said. “I had a warrant to do so.”

“Well,” Mr. Bright said. “Special Branch is sending a courier over to meet with me to pick them up in twenty minutes. So if you will be so kind . . .”

He didn’t finish the sentence, nor did he need to do so. So, the nobs up at Special Branch were swooping in on his ground again, were they?  The lad and the others at the fair must have been spot on, then, a silencer had been used, the murder _was_  related to the murders at Lonsdale.

“What about the lad?” Thursday spat. “We have a few lineups scheduled for him. Is that still permitted?”

“Yes,” Mr. Bright said. “If he singles anyone out, we are to report it to Special Branch immediately.”

Thursday rose with as much dignity as he could muster.

 

“Of course, sir.”

 

 

 

Thursday thundered through the nick in a manner that sent DCs scuttling to get out of his path. It was humiliating, that’s all. Was he a detective inspector or some errand boy for a bunch of swots up at Special Branch? Fetch the evidence, arrange the lineups, and then we’ll take it from here. By God, he had _earned_ his rank, he had _earned_ the right to the truth of the matter. Ten— Ten!—murders now on his ground, and he’s to run along home.

My arse.

He threw the door to his office open, and the lad jumped half out of the chair.

He thought it was just a reaction to the violent manner of his entrance, but, soon, a slow creep of red blushed across the lad’s face, and Thursday noticed he had the book spread before him.

“You read German, then?” Thursday snapped.

Morse nodded.

He did, of course he did. He had nothing to do for five years other than to study. And German was a language of mathematicians, wasn't it? 

 

“What’s it say?” Thursday asked. "The underlined passage?" 

 

He was feeling reckless, fey. If he was going to turn these over, he’d know whatever it was they had to tell him first. 

 

“I love treason, but I hate the traitor,” Morse said simply.

“What’s that mean, then?”

“It’s a quote. From Julius Caesar. It means that he understands the need for treason—for treachery on an abstract, political level—but that he hates the person who actually betrays him.” Morse paused. "This belonged to the man who was killed last night, didn't it?" 

“Erik Rebmann," Thursday conceded. "West German national. You think . . . what, then? That Rebmann had been betrayed? And that he knew it?”

“Yes,” Morse said.

“By whom?”

Morse shrugged.

“What do you make of the painting?”

“Armada?” Morse asked.

 

Thursday rolled his eyes. Of course, he had taken a good look at that, too.

 

Morse shrugged again. “It depends, I suppose. Whose side was this Rebmann on? Britain's? The Soviets'? Or solely his own? And does the word refer to his own side, or is it some sort of warning against the other?" 

 

Morse looked at the painting, and twisted his wide, mobile mouth into a thoughtful frown. 

 

"More than one person can have a silencer, I suppose. But _if_ the same person killed him as killed that man and the others, that would certainly be telling.” 

 

He flipped the painting over again, to where the inscription was written on the back. But he didn’t appear to be looking at it; instead, his eyes had gone unfocused, as if his thoughts were turning and twisting like the vines and trees and birds he had painted on his walls.

 

"Although who killed that man? It doesn't make any sense.  If that man was colluding with the Soviets, why would the Soviets have him killed? But then he wasn't killed on the orders of the British government, either."

Thursday blinked. "Do you think Durrell was working against the British government? That he was colluding with the Soviets?" 

"Yes."

"Why?” Thursday snapped. “What makes you think that?”

"The men from . . . " Morse began, before switching gears abruptly, halfway through his sentence. “Or, it could be ... That man. That man . . . He . . . He . . . ”

 

 _Had_ _no_ _conscience_? Thursday’s mind supplied. _Was a sick bastard?_

 

“He definitely had his own ideas," Morse said. "He wasn’t one to  . . . He wasn’t particularly loyal. Say he was colluding with the Soviets. Then say he decided to go his own way, to sell his work to a higher bidder. The Soviets _may_ have targeted him, in revenge, or simply in order to stop him from disseminating to others information that they wanted kept secret. The gunman. He _could_ have been Russian.”

“And say Rebmann—he’s West German—say he was working for Britain. Say he was planning to meet the man I saw by the carousel, the one with the dark hair, to pass on information. He _might_ have been betrayed, had his cover blown. The same gunman may have killed him, to have stopped him from divulging what he knew.”

 

"Or Rebmann was just a postgraduate student, just as he seemed to be," Thursday said. 

"Who said he was a postgraduate student?" Morse said tartly. 

"He had a student visa. His landlady said he was. That he was here at Oxford, doing a paper on Bertrand Russell."

 

Morse snorted at that.

 

“Why?" Thursday asked. "What’s wrong with that?"

“Bertrand Russell studied at Cambridge, taught at Cambridge. If you’re going to come all the way from Germany to Britain to study Russell, why stop at Oxford? Why not go to Cambridge?" Morse said. 

 He shook his head as if it were the height stupidity to give such an idea  another moment of consideration.

“Armada,” Morse mused. “The Spanish Armada. An iconic failed attack on Britain. Is it meant to be symbolic of another British victory? Or is it meant to mean a second Armada, an attack that _will_ be successful, a symbol of a British defeat?”

“Or it could be an anagram,” Morse continued. “Or an acronym. A-R-M-A-D-A. Lots of As. Association of . . . Something something association? ” Morse let the words fall off then, but his face was still clouded with thought. 

"And then how does Fen... how does that other man fit in?” he said.

Thursday scowled in dismay. For what was he doing? For a moment, it had seemed the most natural thing in the world, to consult Morse as a thoughtful young man, as a rival intelligence. But wasn’t it he who had been encouraging him to forget about the case? To put his past behind him?

 

For a moment, Thursday had felt a surge of hope. The lad had rattled off so many possibilities so quickly, it seemed he might light upon the right one. 

But, on reflection, Thursday had never heard a theory full of more "say this," "say thats" and "could bes" in his life.

 

“Say Durrell betrayed the Soviets and was gunned down by the KGB. Say Rebmann was working for Britain and was gunned down by the same agent. Say some mysterious man was waiting for Rebmann by the carousel. Say I’m the Queen of Sheba,” he intoned. 

 

Morse cut him a look. Then he shrugged. "I'm just stumbling around," he conceded. 

 

"So I see," Thursday said. "And if you want to be a meat and two veg copper, you’ll stick to the facts. It's about what you can prove. You should know that." 

"But we don’t have any facts, we don't have anything we can prove," Morse said. "All we have is a quote and an ambiguous word." 

 

As if Thursday needed reminding.

 

"If you want to make yourself useful, come along with me, then. I've got to drop these things off with Mr. Bright before we head over for the lineups." 

Morse got up from the desk, then, and passed him the the book and the paining, his face full of regret as they were taken from his hands. 

 

*****

 

Morse didn’t look at the men for thirty seconds before he declared, “None of them are him.”

“Well, take a look at least,” Thursday said, a patient chuckle just discernable in his gravely voice. “It took some doing, bringing these men in.”

“No. None of them are him. I’m sure of it. He wouldn’t be in the book I looked at anyway, would he?” Morse said.

 

So, he was back onto the idea that the gunman was some sort of KGB agent was he?

 

“Take a look, at least, Morse,” Thursday protested.

“I am taking a look. None of them are him. I’m certain.”

“You said yourself it was dark. Just give yourself some time to consider, is all I’m asking.”

“Yes, it was dark,” Morse conceded. “And it all happened fast, as well. But  . . . those moments… the feeling of them, I can’t really forget. His features are a bit fuzzy, I’ll admit, but the feeling . . . I’m sure I would recognize him again, if I saw him.”

 

Then his mouth twisted a bit, in a tight expression of disapproval. “And besides…,” he began. Then his face seemed to crumple, and he flicked him an uncertain glance.

 

“Besides what?” Thursday prompted.

 

“Do you think it’s right? My helping you to find him?” Morse asked.

Thursday scowled. “How do you mean? _Do I think it’s right_?”  

 

“Well,” Morse said, considering, dropping his blue gaze. “He helped me, didn’t he? He set me free? Without him, I’d still be there. It seems a poor return, now, my helping to bring him in.”

 

“Oh _, lad,”_ Thursday said incredulously. He was still strewing on the quote about treachery— that much was clear—but how he could arrive at such a wild conclusion was difficult to understand. “You can’t possibly think that’s so.”

But the lad looked at him, perplexed, and a bit crestfallen at the sudden show of disapproval.

“Why not?” he asked.  

“He didn’t _‘help you_ ,’ Morse,” Thursday said, as gently as he could. “He shot you in the shoulder. Do you honestly think that he would have spared you, if he had seen you?”

“No,” Morse said.

“Well, there you are then.”

“But he _didn’t_ kill me. If it weren’t for him, I’d still be there,” Morse said again.

Thursday sighed. “But the fact is, he’s a killer. He may tell himself he’s working for some cause, seeking some sort of justice, but one man’s justice is another man’s murder. That’s why we have the law. To see that justice is done for each and all, without fear or favor.” He shook his head. “With that sort of thinking, you’ll never make a copper.”   

“What sort of thinking?” Morse asked.

“Too much thinking.  Overthinking. Making connections that aren’t there. Reading too much into things.”

“Well,” he said, a bit tartly. “I was just conjecturing.   _Someone's_ got to think this through. It’s obvious you and Jakes don’t have any answers.”

With that comment, Thursday felt his patience break. “Well, it’s not your place to look for the ‘answers,’ is it? It’s your place to take a look at these men, what we’ve pulled out of all corners of Oxfordshire, solely for your consideration.”

“Right,” Morse said. “Right.”

He made a great show then, of looking down the line at each of them. “Well. None of them are the man I saw. And anyway, he wouldn’t have been in any of the books, would he?”

 

And they were right back onto this again. Thursday buried his face in his hands.

 

“I’m sorry,” Morse said, and here is voice broke a bit. “But they’re not. They’re just _not_. Do you want me to make something up and just pin it on someone? I don’t know what you want me to do.”

Thursday shook his head. “Look, lad, don’t be miffed about what I’ve said. Not even I am supposed to be inquiring too deeply into this, honestly. I’m to report all findings and evidence to Mr. Bright, so that he can inform his contact at Special Branch, and that’s all.”

He thought he had managed to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but the corner of Morse’s mouth quirked a bit, as if to say, “you can talk to me of duty all you want, but you can’t fool me. You want to know what happened almost as badly as I do.”

 

Thursday scowled and turned to call to the sergeant on duty. “We’re done here,” he said. “None of them makes the match.”

The sergeant nodded curtly, and went off to inform the two PCs on guard.

 

Thursday stole a glance at his watch. “I’ve got just enough time to run you home before I have to see DeBryn,” he said. “Not that he’s likely to have anything to show me,” he muttered to himself.

 

He couldn’t help but wonder if DeBryn had received a visit quite like they had at the Cowley CID.

 

“Oh,” Morse said, “Well, I don’t want to make you late for your friend. I can come with you.”

 

My _friend_? Thursday thought. It took him a moment to understand what Morse was on about.

He flattered himself that DeBryn seemed to tolerate him more than most, but it seemed odd that the lad would come to the conclusion that they were _friends_ , exactly.

Although what grasp did the lad have on social subtleties, having been locked away for five years?

 

“’Ts all right,” Thursday said. “Won’t take two shakes of a lamb’s tail to run you back in the Jag.”

“Well,” Morse said, his face clouding. “It’s just. . . .” He put a hand to his shoulder.

“Just what?” Thursday said, shrewdly.

“It’s just. . . I didn’t want to be a bother but. . . I think I shouldn’t have gone on so many of those rides. It’s only . . . the others were so keen, I wanted to keep up. But . . . I think I tore my stiches a bit, holding on to the safety bar too tightly.”

“Well, I’ll drop you by the hospital, then.”

“No!” Morse blurted, his eyes wide, leaving Thursday to blink at the sudden burst of vehemence.  

“I mean,” he added more quietly, “I don’t want to go to hospital. I don’t want to go back there. Can’t I just. . . . go along with you and see if your friend will take a look at them again?”

Thursday considered him for a long while. “All right, then,” he sighed.

 

He made a mental note, then and there. If Morse ever did become a PC, and if Thursday ever found himself his gov’nor, he’d never send the lad undercover.

 

Christ, but he was a transparent liar.

*****

“Just wait there,” Thursday barked, indicating a chair in a waiting area.

“All right,” Morse said, agreeably.

Thursday strode down the long, cold, white-tiled hall until he reached the mortuary. Sure enough, DeBryn was there, in his bow tie and white coat, standing by the counter—but the mortuary table was bare.

 

 “Let me guess,” Thursday intoned. “Someone from Special Branch paid you a visit.”

DeBryn nodded. “They took everything, I’m afraid. The corpse, the bullets I had extracted, even my notes. But . . .”— and here, his expression changed, from airily accepting to solemn—“They couldn’t take my brain.”

“Yes?” Thursday prompted.

“The bullets. They were a perfect match to the ones found in Durrell, Adams and the seven students.”  

Thursday nodded grimly. “Same gunman, then?”

“I’d say it’s probable, yes. The height of Rebmann’s wounds . . . they are the same as those of Durrell and of one of the students, the two victims at Lonsdale who were also shot at close range.”

“Right,” Thursday said, considering. “Right.”

“I’m sorry, Inspector,” DeBryn said. “I hadn’t time for anything else.”

“It’s enough,” Thursday said. “Thank you, doctor.”

DeBryn nodded.

“Actually,” Thursday said. “I was wondering if you might do me a favor. The young man I had with me the other day, he may have torn at his stiches again. Would you mind. . . ?”  

DeBryn cast him a doubtful look. Then he raised his eyebrows in resignation. “It’s a bit unorthodox, but I’ll make an exception. Your young man . . . there’s a story there, I take it? He seems a bit . . . eccentric.”

And this was his chance: it was precisely why he allowed Morse to come along.

 

Because the lad’s behavior seemed to change with the wind, didn’t it? Was he _truly_ quite all right?

 

“He was the survivor,” Thursday said. “Of that night.”

“Well, yes,” DeBryn said. “I recognized him, obviously. Those eyes. They’d be distinctive enough even if I hadn’t seen them flying open in the face of a dead man, as I did.”

“Yes, well,” Thursday said. “He wasn’t one of the students, though. Jakes found . . . well, he found a hidden room. More like a cell, really. He’d been held there. For five years.”

 

It took quite a bit to prompt a reaction from DeBryn, but at that, the man blinked owlishly behind his glasses.

“As some sort of . . _. captive,_ do you mean?” DeBryn asked.

“Clive Durrell knew him when he was up, evidently, Morse. Wanted Morse to study under him in mathematics, but Morse wasn’t interested; he was reading Greats. So, he seems to have abducted him, sometime in early 1960. He had him working on some sort of project or projects. I don’t know what it was about. Neither does the lad. He just worked, did as he was told.”

“He kept him at the house, in small room. I don’t think he left the second floor of that house for the whole time he was there. Told him he was at a top-secret installation, Durrell did. He didn’t even speak to him, once he was settled. Had some idea that language would interfere with Morse’s getting on with mathematics. Five years. When he woke in hospital, it seemed almost as if he had forgotten how to speak.”

 

DeBryn raised his eyebrows. “ _It was your voice I heard,_ ’ That’s what he told me, last time he was here. “ _I didn’t know if I could understand words anymore, but I understood you right away. You said ‘call for an ambulance.’_ So, I was . . .”

“Possibly the first person he heard speak in five years, yes,” Thursday confirmed.

 

DeBryn looked dumbfounded. He had never quite seen the expression on the doctor’s face before.

 

“He seems all right on the whole. Sometimes I . . . Sometimes I don’t know what to make of him,” Thursday confided.

“Solitary confinement can have odd effects on people,” DeBryn said sagely.

“Would you . . . would you mind, then? He’s afraid of going back to hospital, and I’d like him checked, just in case. But to be honest, I think this might be a fishing expedition,” Thursday said.

“A what?” DeBryn asked.

“He seems awfully interested in the case.”

“Oh. Well. Understandable, I suppose,” DeBryn said, “considering how it must have affected his life.”

 “So, you will then?” Thursday said. “And . . . perhaps give me your opinion on ... Well, his behavior as well? What you make of him?”

“I’d be happy to take a look at his stitches, but I’m hardly a psychologist, Inspector,” DeBryn said.

“I know that,” Thursday assured him. “Just any advice you might have at all. He’s been staying with my family. Feel a bit over my head, at times.”

DeBryn sighed. “All right, then. Show him in, Inspector.”

**********

As soon as Morse came into the mortuary, he began to look around, openly curious as to what he might see.

“Is that the man from the fair here?” he asked.

Thursday and DeBryn exchanged meaningful looks behind his back, as Morse sat at the edge of the table, craning his neck to get a look at the small, square shelving unit doors around the corner.

 

Oh, Christ. So, he was on inquiry, was he?

 

“No,” DeBryn said. “Special Branch has felt it necessary to relieve me of my duties in this case.”

Morse merely smirked at that. “You can’t tell me you didn’t have the chance to figure out a few things, though, before they got wind of it.”

“Yes, I did. Information which I have just related to Inspector Thursday,” DeBryn said, pointedly.

“So. Was the bullet that killed Erik Rebmann from the gun that killed that man?”  Morse asked.

DeBryn turned to Thursday then, the question clear on his face. “ _That_ _man_?” DeBryn asked.

“He means Durrell,” Thursday sighed. Then he rounded on Morse. “Stop wasting the good doctor’s time. It’s those stitches you were on about, I thought.”

“Well, actually . . .” Morse began, undoing his buttons slowly and reluctantly.

“Actually _what_?” Thursday asked.

“They aren’t so very bad. Just itching. They’re just healing, I suppose.” Morse started doing his buttons up again. “They’re fine, I’d say.”

“Let’s just see then, shall we?” DeBryn said. “It would be a shame for you to have come all this way for nothing.”

“You never know,” Thursday said. “It would be a pity for you to lose your whole arm, for want of keeping an eye on that wound.”

Morse sighed and flashed Thursday a dark look. Then he undid the buttons for a second time, rolling one freckled and pale shoulder out from his shirt.

“Well, a miracle of surgery, then,” DeBryn said. “They look absolutely fine. Still, I’m sure it was better to be safe than sorry,” he added kindly.

Morse flushed red at this, and began to quickly redo the buttons on his shirt, his left hand working deftly. His eyes wavered a bit, as if he was casting about for a chance to change the subject.

 

“Are you still going to Devon?” he asked.

“I am,” DeBryn said.  “This morning’s proceedings made me a bit late in my departure.”

“Oh,” Morse said, hopping down from the table.  “Well,” he said. “I hope you have good luck, then, on your fishing trip.”

“Thank you,” DeBryn said. “I daresay I will. Much better than you had on yours, anyway.”

The twitch of a smile played around the doctor’s mouth as he said the words.

“What?” Morse asked, confused.

Then, a split second later, as the meaning behind the words dawned on him, he stopped, his face impassive. “Oh,” he said.

The coldness on the lad’s haughty face might have sent some blinking into retreat, but DeBryn clearly wasn’t intimidated. He had almost to duck his face to hide his smile.

“All right lad,” Thursday said. “You had your run. Wait for me out in the anteroom.”

Morse looked sullen, but otherwise complied with good grace.

 

Well, God only knew what DeBryn might make of that little performance. It certainly didn’t show the lad to the best light.

 

“Well, doctor?” Thursday asked.

“May seem a bit young for his age, socially. He’s lost a few years, there, I suppose. But, overall, I’d say he must have had remarkable reserves of strength, to hold out as well as he did. Might just take him some time, to find his bearings, so to speak.”

 

“Ah,” Thursday said.

It was funny, he thought, that he should  feel a swell of pride at that.

Even though he had done nothing to warrant it.

**********

 

“Going to have to learn to be a bit less transparent than that, if you want to make detective someday,” Thursday said, once they were back in the car.

“If I were a detective I’d just ask, and people would have to answer me,” Morse countered.

“Oh. They would, huh? Just that easy?”

Morse said nothing, only turned and looked out the window.

Well, fair enough. With any luck, he might have tired the lad out, at any rate. They might get through the night without numbers and equations and formulas.

 

  
“Stop the car!” Morse shouted, suddenly. “Stop the car!”

Thursday hit the brakes, thinking that surely Morse must have seen something he hadn’t. A child running into the road, or a dog or a cat.

As soon as the car was stopped, Morse jumped out of the passenger’s seat and bolted straight into Richardson’s.

Thankfully, there was a space available on the curb. Thursday parked the car and followed in after.

 

“I need to see Mr. Anderson, immediately,” Morse was shouting, as Thursday came into the door.

“What’s it now?” asked the young man at the register. It was Anderson’s son, the gawky young man with the bad shaving rash.

“That sign!” Morse shouted. "Five shillings off of eleven, is six, not seven!"

“Yeah?” the young man said. “’S that so? Look, we don’t need some college boy coming in here and telling us how to do our jobs, do we? You people are all the same. So high and mighty. You’ll get what’s coming to you, one of these days, you will. Cocky bastard.”

At the sound of raised voices, Mr. Anderson came out of the small office, his hands raised as if to quiet the both of them. Suddenly, it felt almost as if he and Mr. Anderson were boxing coaches, pacing outside the cordons, while their lightweight contenders circled in the ring.

“It’s nothing to do with me being a ‘college boy,’” Morse said tartly. “I’m not a student. It’s simple mathematics. A child could tell you as much. Do you know how dangerous it could be, that sort of mistake?”

“What?” Thursday asked, trying to diffuse the situation. “Someone might get too much change back, at the register?”

Morse spun on his heel and stared at him in disbelief; he looked ready to fly to pieces, and Thursday felt a sudden pang of remorse, as if he’d betrayed the lad by making light of his concerns.

“Let’s see if you’d ever like to get on an aeroplane, designed by engineers who share your opinion, shall we?” Morse snapped. "It makes no sense. Why would someone write a seven when there is no need for one! Don't you know that sevens. . . . " 

But what they were, Morse seemed unable to say. He spun back to the young man at the register. “I’m not asking for a lot here,” Morse continued, and then— suddenly— the whole tenor of his voice changed, erupting into almost a snarl, “I’m just asking you _to get it right_.”

 

Thursday felt an odd chill at the back of his nape, and the cashier’s meaty hands curled into fists, at the change of Morse’s tone.

 

Thursday and Mr. Anderson started forward right away, Thursday grabbing Morse by the back of his white shirt and pulling him back.

“Morse!” Thursday boomed.

“But it’s not right,” Morse insisted.

“That’s enough, Morse,” Thursday said.

“It certainly is,” Mr. Anderson said. “I don’t need this lunatic coming in here and causing a disturbance again. Many of my patrons are elderly, and they don’t need the distress. If I see your nephew in here again, I’m calling the police.”

“I _am_ the police,” Thursday reminded the man, glumly.

“Good, then,” Mr. Anderson snapped. “Shouldn’t be too hard, then, should it?”

Morse let out a cry of indignation at that. “They can’t ban me from the grocer’s,” he said. “What if I need to do an errand for Mrs. Thursday?”

“Should have thought of that earlier,” Thursday said. “Now, let’s go.” Morse looked about as if to protest further, but, then, he seemed to cave, following along as Thursday guided him out of the store.

*******

“What was all that about?” Thursday said, as soon as he hustled Morse back to the car.

“It wasn’t right. A mistake like that. It could be catastrophic. I just want them to get it right,” Morse said.

“Is that all?” Thursday said. “Are you sure that’s not what Durrell told you?”

 

Morse paled at that, and turned to look out of the window.

“Morse,” Thursday said.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said quietly.

“I’m sorry, lad,” Thursday said.

But he had gone completely still, refusing to look at him.

Thursday sighed and turned his eyes back to the road.

 

As soon as they got in the house, Morse went straight through, toward the back patio door.

“Is everything all right?” Win asked.

Morse shook his head. “I’m done with it,” he said. “I’m . . . I’m finished with it. I just. . . I’m just going to do some weeding, is that . . . ? Is that all right?”

“Of course, love,” Win said, as Morse retreated out of the back door.

As soon as the door was closed, Win said, “What on earth could have happened? It was just a lineup, wasn’t it?”

Thursday felt like hell. All he could bring himself to say was, “Just don’t send him down to fetch anything from Richardson’s. Lad’s just gotten himself a lifetime ban.”

“What?” Win asked, laughing.

Her laugh faded when she saw by his face that he was serious.

“What happened?”

“They need to brush up on their basic mathematics, I’m afraid. Morse. . . took offence at one of their signs.”

A light of understanding settled on Win’s face. “Ah,” she said simply.

“Well,” he said, scooping his hat back onto his head.  “I’m off. I best be getting back down to the nick.” He paused at the door. “Call me, if the lad is any trouble.”

“What?” Win asked, disbelievingly. “ _Morse_?”

 

Yes, Morse, Thursday thought grimly, sweeping back out to the Jag.

 

The rest of his day was spent running in even more circles. A stolen vehicle over in Jericho. Later found to have been “borrowed” by a careless teenaged son. A woman reported her purse stolen only to remember she had left it at the grocer’s. This was the sort of wild goose chase he spent his time on.

 

While ten murders went unanswered. While Special Branch seized his evidence.

He did have one minute of vindication.

“The lad says its none of them,” he reported to Mr. Bright, thinking to himself all the while, “So Special Branch can stick that in its pipe and smoke it.”  

******

It was late by the time he made it home, nearly going half past eight. As soon as he came down the hall and into the den, he saw Morse there, dressed to the nines in a trim evening suit, looking out the front window.

Thursday laughed. “What do you call this?”

“I told you,” Morse said. “I’m going to a party.”

 

Well, of course, he’d be going to a party in an evening suit. It was one of _those_ parties, after all.

 

For some reason, when the lad had told him about it earlier that day, he had envisioned it as one of the parties Joan used to have, when the kids would push the furniture in the den against the wall to make room to dance to Joan’s records, while Win provided the guests with bowls of pretzels and bottles of Squash.

 

So, it was an Oxford party, he was off to, was it? At one of those big piles on Lake Silence. Where he would have access to all sorts of rumors and gossip about Rebmann and Durrell and the Lonsdale Moral Science Club and a chance to hear all of the insiders’ scoops and all sorts of speculative theories. 

 

Well.

 

Thursday took a long and quiet look at Morse’s grim face, at the determination in the bright blue eyes, the stubborn twist to the wide mouth and the square chin.

The lad wasn’t going to any party.

He was going out on another inquiry.

Oh, bugger it.

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a gift for gwendolynflight, who always leaves such fun comments and is especially helpful when it comes to Morse’s college friends! :0)

 

Morse wasn’t sure why it didn’t occur to him earlier just what a good opportunity the party on Lake Silence might prove to be.

 

Inspector Thursday was right: there was more to being a good detective than merely asking questions.

It was equally important to ask questions in such a manner so as actually to get some answers.

 

And what better place to get some answers  than at a party on Lake Silence? Replete with all of the latest gossip, the innuendo, the rumors that, when you dug through them, so often carried a grain of truth?

Just one run-in with someone like Jerome Hogg—or even one conversation with Bunny or Bruce—and he might uncover just the piece of information he needed to unravel the entire case.

 

And best of all, it was the sort of party that Inspector Thursday would never attend.

 

Morse could not believe, in retrospect, how careless he had been in Thursday’s office. The book, that painting: both seemed to present such boundless possibilities that Morse quite forgot himself, allowed himself to get carried away, casting about for different theories, different explanations as to what the underlined quote and word might mean.

He had gotten so lost in spirals of thought and torrents of forbidden words, that he had almost mentioned the men from Special Branch—right in front of Inspector Thursday. He had almost mentioned Sebastian Fenix, even.

Had he forgotten, so readily, what Singleton and Louis had said—that they would be watching him? That they would be watching the Thursdays? That someone else might be watching them, as well?

 

Even now, riding in Tony’s ridiculously blue convertible, along a road dark with thick fir trees, he couldn’t help but to cast a look around, glancing back over his shoulder. Was someone watching, even now, from the shadows of the black woods? Checking up on his progress? Was someone watching the Thursdays’ house, noting when he came and went?

 

The last thing he wanted was to get the Thursdays involved in any of this. And there was no reason for them to be. Well could he understand Thursday’s conundrum—but, at the end of the day—Thursday was, as he had said, a meat and two veg copper. Uncovering the mystery of those murders wasn’t his responsibility. It wasn’t his case.

But as for Morse, however. . .  well, as for Morse, Louis and Singleton had made it clear.

 

The only way out was through.

 

And for now, he was stuck, entangled as if in a net. He had no idea how to get into Sebastian Fenix’s office. No idea as to what might be in Laboratory Four. No ideas as to how the three men: Sebastian Fenix, Erik Rebmann, and that man might be connected.

 

He had nothing but an underlined quote from a German copy of a nineteenth-century biography of Julius Caesar, and the underlined word on the back of a painting, _Armada._

 

Tony took a wide, easy turn, smiling to himself as the sleek car obeyed the slightest touch of the wheel. It certainly was a smooth ride.

 

 “Did you hear what happened at the fair last night?” Tony said. “I heard a man more or less got his _head_ cut off on one of the rides. That’s why they had to shut down early.”

“No,” Morse said, watching as the trees flashed past in lines, like hatchmarks on the white wall. “A man was shot. He was a German. Named Erik Rebmann.”

Tony startled. “ _Rebmann?”_

 

Tony’s note of recognition and surprise made Morse turn at once in his seat. Could it be this easy?

 

“What?” Morse asked, at once. “Do you know him?”

“Do I _know_ him?” Tony asked incredulously. “ _You_ know him.”

“What?” asked Morse.

“He was a fourth year, when we were in second. He was at a lecture series with us. With Professor Richmond. Don’t you remember?”

“No,” Morse said.

“He sat right in front of us, Pagan,” Tony said.

Morse thought this over. “No. No. I don’t remember.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “That was right before you were engaged. You were always daydreaming, back then. Probably too busy doodling _EM & SF_ in your notebook, surrounded by little hearts.”

Morse scowled. “I never did any such thing.”

“Oh, you didn’t, did you? I think I may have a book you borrowed that might prove otherwise.”  

 

Morse dismissed that at once. He would never deface someone else’s property. Just one of Tony’s incomprehensible jokes, then.

 

“What was the lecture series on?” Morse asked.

“Milton,” Tony supplied. “You can’t tell me you don’t remember that awful paper Bunny wrote?”

 

Morse’s breath caught somewhere at the base of his throat, so that, for a moment, he felt strangely airless. For there it was: somewhere, beneath the reams of paper and formulas, the flash of a memory, of sitting in a small lecture hall seat, the sort that never gave him room enough for his legs, wedged between Tony and Bunny, Tony passing a paper across him.

 

_“Well, it’s a fine paper, Edmund,” Tony said. “But . . . “_

_“But what?” Bunny asked, in his honking voice._

_“But don’t you want to mention Milton once in a while? Wasn’t that the assignment?”_

_“Oh,” Bunny said. “Milton. My god, but he’s overblown. Why would I want to drag him into this?”_  

_Pagan had dissolved into laughter._

 

_And then, an older student with wavy dark blonde hair had turned and scowled at them in disapproval._

_“Shhhhh.”_

 

Morse inhaled sharply.

“I remember,” Morse said. “You’re right. That was him.”

“What do you mean?” asked Tony, turning his face toward him as he maneuvered a snaking curve through the trees. “Did you actually _see_ the body?”

 

But Morse was raking over another memory.

 

_“Excuse me,” the man sitting before him had said, in a pleasantly crisp German accent, “Would you read this over for the syntax? I didn’t have time to show it to my tutor.”_

_Morse took the paper, his eyes scanning over it quickly before passing it back. “It looks fine,” he shrugged._

 

“He was going to some language tutor, wasn’t he?” Morse asked.

“That’s right,” Tony said. “Mathilda Bagshot. A lot of the foreign students went to her. I had three of them on my hall, Rebmann included, second year. Always wondered why Rebmann bothered; his English was near perfect, I always thought.”

 

A chameleon, then. A good skill if one wanted a career in espionage.

So, Rebmann had known Professor Richmond.

Alexander Richmond.  

 

Morse didn’t know Richmond well, but once, he had found himself partnering him at bridge.

 

_Professor Richmond sat across from him at the card table, his wild white hair catching the lamplight so that it glowed like a dandelion clock. He stacked the cards and murmured, “How do you feel about country?”_

_“Why do you ask?” Morse asked._

_“I quite wondered if you had ever considered a career with the Foreign Office?_

 

Had Rebmann allowed himself to be recruited, then?

 

It might be worth going to speak to Professor Richmond. But that would mean, of course, going back to Lonsdale, and Morse wasn’t sure if he would ever be ready to do that. Would it not be odd, walking down the halls, seeing the ghosts of his former self in every corner? Knowing that he had once passed along that very way, innocent of all knowledge of what lay before him?

 

Morse shuddered.

 

He wished he had a good, strong pint of ale, just to take the edge off a bit. The dark, soothing drink had made him feel so much better the day he sat with Inspector Thursday in the pub garden. Suddenly, he felt intimidated by what he was about to do.

 

To find any sort of future, it would seem that he would have to—in one way or another—delve into the past.

 

Soon, Tony was circling in front of a large, stone house, lit up so as to look as if it was on fire. Morse was not greatly heartened by the sight. It was twice as large and five times as brazen as Tony’s comfortingly ancient manor house, a house which stood ensconced in ivy, as if it were part of the natural landscape. This house stood alone, and it seemed to bear down on him, as if it were . . . as if it were watching him.

Morse thought that he knew the area fairly well, as both Tony and Bruce lived nearby, but this house—this house he had never seen before.

“Who’s giving this party, anyway?” Morse asked.

“Why, Bixby,” Tony said, as though the answer were obvious.

“Who's Bixby?”

Tony looked at him incredulously. “ _Everybody_ knows Bixby,” he said.

 

********

 

If the fair was a kaleidoscope of voices and light, then the large stone house on Lake Silence was like an entire universe of kaleidoscopes, with room after room pulsating to its own colors, its own rhythm, its own rush of life.

As soon as he and Tony stepped through the wide doors, Morse felt as if he was spinning. The vaulted ceilings, hung with abundances of gold and glowing chandeliers, were as high as that of any cathedral: the entire place in fact was just like a cathedral, a domed palace of decadence.

Awful, jarring music—overwhelming and loud—sent the air vibrating—but, as Morse had noticed at the fair, it _did_ have a heartbeat, a primal urgency, if not grace or beauty. As the baseline soared up and down the scales, circles of red and green and blue lights spun projected onto the walls and over the crowds of men and women who danced and drank and laughed, while others sought the shadows, embracing in dark corners.

 

“Pagan! Tony!” Bruce called, making his way through the circles of guests, his shoulders much broader than Morse had remembered. But he had to remember: five years had passed, after all. Bruce, Tony had said, had taken over his father’s business—he was the president of the East India Shipping Company now, a man in his prime, no longer simply his hall mate, Tony’s annoying cousin, and therefore, by some sort of default, his friend.

 

_“Come on, Pagan. Twenty pounds if you’ll translate this Cicero for me.”_

 

“I told you we’d dig you out. Some bloody spectacle, isn’t it?” Bruce said. He nodded to the next room. “Pippa’s been looking for you. She’s right through there, all abuzz about some paintings she wants you to see.” Then he placed a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “You’ll have to excuse us, for the time being,” he said. “I must discuss business with Tony.” And then, without warning, he steered Tony away through the crowds. 

 

Morse wandered through to the next room—it would be difficult, after all, holding inquires here: it was so loud, it was difficult to talk, impossible to hear.  

A waiter held out a tray to him as he passed, on which stood a glass vase filled with exotically thin, twisted cigarettes. Morse put up a hand and shook his head, continuing on. God only knew what they were.

 

As he came to an arching doorway trimmed with fairy lights, he found Pippa, looking unfamiliarly grown-up in an elegant updo, circling the room with some sort of small camera she held over one eye, giving her a rakish look, like a pirate.

“Pagan!” she said in greeting. “Come in, here. You’ll love this.”

Morse followed her into the next room, a room painted ivory with gold embellished filigrees, hung with deep velvet draperies and fine paintings, and infused with an eerie red light.

 

“They say that Bixby has a man who flies around, scouring the palaces of princes and maharajas,” she said. “Can you imagine?”

Morse laughed. Her hair had changed, but with that one sentence it was clear she was still the Pippa he knew. “The loot of the world,” he said, playing along.  

“Hmmmmm,” she agreed. “Some of these pieces are priceless. Literally.”

 

Morse stopped and stood before a copy of a Pieter Claesz still life that sat on an easel, and he crossed his arms, meditatively. The skull and the sculpture, white against the black canvas, the book the spiriano lying carelessly on the floor, every detail in place, but taken in the whole . . ,

 

“And some of these pieces are worthless. Literally,” he said.

“What?” Pippa asked, disbelievingly.  

He nodded to the painting. “It’s a copy. It’s a fake. A good one, but. . .”

 

Then, Morse felt his heart skip a beat: for he had seen fake paintings like this one before; he had seen similar high-quality copies of great works at the Fenix factory.

Could this Bixby fellow have anything to do with Sebastian Fenix, the sinister perfumier with the odd taste in housepets? Or were Bixby and Fenix simply two wealthy men who were both taken in by the same dealer?  

 

“Oh, I doubt that,” Pippa said, coming behind him to look. “He’s a rich as Croesus.”

But Morse shook his head. “Look at the pattern of the brushstrokes. The ratio of them. They’re all wrong for a Claesz.”

 

Just then, the shadow of a man emerged from the halo of bright red light.

“How do you know?” he asked, in a rich and warm, but challenging voice.

 

“I know,” Morse said, simply “Because I’m standing right here looking at it. A typical Claesz might have, say twenty-five to twenty-nine individual brushstrokes per square inch. This has, only about twenty to twenty-two, or so, I’d estimate.”

“Ah,” said the man. “But can you be sure of what you see?”

“Quite sure,” Morse said.

“Well, you know what they say,” the man replied. “Appearances, can be deceiving.” He held out a gold gambling chip to him as he spoke; then, he flipped it into the air so that it sparkled merrily in the odd light.

He snatched it easily and placed it solidly in his palm, and then, with a showy wave of his broad hands, the chip disappeared. It was an old trick, one Morse had seen several times before.

Morse snorted and nodded to where a Roman bust stood on a column, wearing—rather anachronistically—a top hat, of all things. “Perhaps, for your next trick, you might pull our host from that top hat and we can ask him,” Morse said.

 

The man stepped forward then, emerging from the aura of diffused red light; he was younger than Morse had supposed, dressed in a trim evening suit, with slightly feathered, smooth dark hair, parted in the middle as if he had stepped right out of the 1920s.

He smiled rakishly, his dark eyes bright in the colored lights, and said, “I’d be delighted to, old man.”

He spun on the spot, then, and, in one graceful movement, turned about so that the hat ended up perched on top of his head. He dipped the hat with a flourish and bowed.

 

 “Et voila!” he said.

He straightened, then, smiling even more broadly.  

 

It took a moment for the implication to set in: Morse felt a slow blush of red creep across his face, as Pippa seemed to disappear into the crowd.

He realized, too late, that he had been quite tactless, rude even, disparaging the man’s things, when he had been kind enough to have him as a guest.

But Bixby, noting his expression, merely laughed again, apologetically, as if he were the one at fault for having caught Morse out. “I’m sorry, old man,” he said. “I thought you knew.”

He put one broad, warm hand on his shoulder and began steering him out of the room and down a hall, through the crowds. “I’m Bixby,” he said. “My friends call me Bix.”  He turned, then, and looked at him, his dark eyes—just for a moment—more solemn. “Morse, isn’t it?” he asked.

Morse tried to hide his surprise.

“Yes,” Bixby said, taking his expression as a confirmation. “Anthony said that it was.”

 

Oh. Well, that explained it. This point made a lot of difference, in his estimation. Tony was a good judge of character—admitting when even his own second cousin, Bruce, wore on his nerves.

 

“You know Anthony?” Morse asked, uncertainly.  

“Yes. He’s been my guest many times. Both here and in London. I’ve a place on Berkley Square. Perhaps you know it?” Bixby asked.

  
 He turned his head to him again as he posed the question, and, suddenly, Morse thought that there was something familiar in the gesture.

 

Morse frowned. “Have we met before?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Bixby said smoothly. “Another life perhaps?” he asked, and his full mouth softened into a smile, as if he was greatly pleased by his own wit.

 

Soon, another man approached him in the hall, looking as if he was frantic to speak to him. Bixby, however, remained unflappable.

 “Sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid there are things to which I must attend. Do you have everything you want?”  

“Which of us can answer yes to that? In present company, obviously,” Morse said.

 

Bixby laughed and turned around, this time with a smile that reached his eyes.

 

“If you’re free tomorrow, come and watch me put Redtail through her paces. My hydroplane. Say about eleven?” 

 

And then he winked at him and disappeared, into the heart of the party.

 

Morse stood stock still amidst the vibrating crowd for a moment, considering the man, the expensive suit, the tanned suave face, the bemused dark eyes.

Those paintings. _Could_  Bixby have anything to do with Fenix? Bixby and Fenix were clearly both frauds, both smug and haughty men who seemed to feel as if they were somehow larger than life.

But there was a difference there as well. They were both clearly frauds, true, but the manner in which the carried on their deception was quite different. Whereas Fenix had been arrogant, even a tad threatening, wearing his mask as a means to intimidate, Bixby wore his lightly, as if it were all a game, as if he were including you in the joke.

Yes, it’s all smoke and mirrors, his smile seemed to say.

But admit it. It’s good fun, isn’t it?

 

No. It was likely that Bixby had nothing to do with Fenix. Especially if Tony seemed to be on good terms with the man. Inspector Thursday was right. There was no point in seeing connections where they weren’t.

 

Sometimes a postgraduate student isn’t just a postgraduate student, but sometimes a copy of a painting is just a copy of a painting.

 

Morse wandered down the hall amidst the revolving lights that projected red and green and blue circles onto white columns and through the hum of voices that merged somehow into a roar, sidling sideways where the crowds were thickest, until he came to a wide doorway hung with crystal beads. He walked through, parting the crystals like diamonds with his hands, so that they shimmered about him, giving him the feeling that he was walking through a rainstorm. The next room was set with a sea of small, round tables—and at once, he saw them: Bruce, Kay and Tony sitting with an expressively chatty Jerome Hogg.

 

Kay, when she caught sight of him, widened her eyes meaningfully. She looked a bit more brittle than she once had, almost daunting. But then, she had always had a low degree of tolerance for Jerome.

Getting an earful of whatever people like Jerome had to say, however, was precisely why Morse had come to the party, so it wasn’t difficult to follow her unspoken request to come and save her from her present company.

“Ah, Pagan,” Jerome said, once he saw Morse approach. He could tell right away from his gleeful expression that he had been sharing some intriguing tidbit. About Rebmann? About who might have killed that man?

“Long time, no see,” Jerome said. “Come,” he added, patting an empty chair. “Sit. I was just giving everyone the lowdown on the Lonsdale Massacre.”

 

Morse felt his stomach lurch. This wasn’t the sort of tale he was seeking; this had the sound not of abstract theory, but of something more detailed than what he had hoped to hear.

 

 _Lonsdale Massacre?_ Is that what they were calling that night? And in such a flip sort of tone, to top all?

 

Kay looked unimpressed, and, to Morse’s surprise, she kicked back a glass of some sort of amber liquor as if it were water.  “Well,” she said “good riddance to Durrell, anyway.”

“Always so sensitive, aren’t you darling?” Bruce said. “I thought fashion models were supposed to gush about rainbows and butterflies and world peace.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Kay said. “It’s terrible about those students. But Durrell? He was a bastard. The way he used to look at people sometimes made my skin crawl. He must have pushed somebody too far, finally, that's all. That much is clear." 

 

Morse felt his stomach turn over, completely.

 

Just then Jerome leaned forward, “Have you heard about the Lonsdale Massacre survivor?”

Bruce snorted. “ _Survivor?_ What’s this rot?”

“You may scoff,” Jerome said. “But my friend Carter Hall told me that his wife’s friend’s great-aunt lives three houses down from Clive Durrell, and she saw an ambulance in front of the house that night.”

“They call out an ambulance at all such emergencies, Jerome. It’s just the way it’s done,” Tony said.

Bruce lowered his glass, wearing his familiar expression of contempt. “No one could have survived that. It was a bloodbath.  One hundred and seventeen rounds is what I heard.”

 

And suddenly, the room was spinning.

 

“And where did this person go then of to, then?” Kay asked.

“Off with that crackpot who says she survived the Romanov execution, the one who claims to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia,” Bruce said drolly.

“Yes. They’re setting up an inn together, I heard,” Tony said. “Down at Blackpool.”

Jerome looked mutinous. “Hall’s wife’s friend’s great-aunt said that . . . “

But Bruce cut him off. “Really, Jerome. How could there be any survivors?  They’ll never even dig all of the bullets out of the walls, is what I was told.”

 

Dig the bullets out of the walls. Out of the bloodbath. And Morse had stared at a metal ceiling and there was a flash of red light and unfamiliar voices and faces and he was in a fog, he couldn’t understand what was happening, and a man in a white coat seemed to be probing, almost digging at his shoulder.

 

Morse felt the blood drain from his head, and he got up abruptly, leaving the table.

 

“Pagan?” Kay called.

He stumbled blindly through the crowds. He didn’t know what to think. And the twisting lights and the strumming, beating, churning music were all too much, the crowds too close; he could not walk without feeling the brush of an elbow, the unwelcome touch of a shoulder.

 

"They’ll _never even dig all of the bullets out of the walls, is what I was told.”_

Nor, probably, out of all of those . . . . 

Morse felt as if he might be ill. 

 

A waiter in a livery was passing with a silver tray, set with globe-shaped glasses, brimming with a cool blue liquid. The blue looked soothing, it looked alluring, it looked like nothing natural. Morse lifted the glass from the tray and swallowed it in one go as he passed. The blue tasted like ice and oranges and honey; it had a sharp, biting citrus sweetness to it, piercing enough so as to eclipse all thought. He felt it then, the warmth he had felt in the pub garden. And so, he followed the waiter back a few paces and took another glass from the tray.  

 

It was good—oranges and honey and sweetness and warmth—and it sent the world into retreat, calling off its attack on his senses, on him. It seemed as if the blue went straight to his head, filling him with a tingling sensation, as if he was floating. Around him, the world was mad, the world was raging, but he was a bubble, passing serenely through, inviolate and untouchable.

Morse carried his empty glass up to the bar, where there were rows of other drinks in globe-shaped glasses, drinks of red and green and orange and blue, all as incandescent as the refracted light of a rainbow. Morse took a red one and drunk it half down. And it was pretty good, too. He held it up, considering its shine, when he heard two familiar voices beside him, deep in argument.

 

 “No, Edmund,” Henry said. “I’m simply not floating you that sort of money, You’re on your own.”

“But, Henry, I’ve got to keep up the old Corcoran honor. You can understand that, can’t you?”  Bunny said.

“What is it?” Pagan asked.

Henry flicked him a disgusted look. “Edmund here as just lost a quarter of a million pounds to Bixby at cards.”

“ _A quarter of a million_?” Morse asked. “You don’t have that sort of money, do you Bunny?”

“He doesn’t have it of course,” Henry said, answering for him.

“I can get it to you, by and by. Help me out here, Henry,” Bunny said. And then Bunny’s eyes landed on his neon red drink.

“Oh, _Siegfried_ ,” Bunny said. “Son. What the hell are you drinking?”

“I don’t know,” Morse said. “It’s good, though.” His voice sounded funny to himself, thick, as if it were coming from far, far away. “It tastes like red popsicles.”  

“You are aware it contains alcohol, aren’t you?” Henry said, owlishly.  

“Yes, I thought that was rather the point,” Morse said.

 

Henry and Bunny looked at one another and snorted with laughter.

But that’s how they were, the two of them. Arguing one moment and the next moment laughing, all is forgiven.

 

“Please tell me you didn’t drink anything of that sort while you were in the army,” Henry said.

 

“The army?” Morse almost said, but then he stopped himself. Morse couldn’t help but wonder if Tony had told them this, so that he would not be further questioned, and felt a surge of gratitude.

 

“What’s wrong with it?” Morse asked.

Henry regarded him blankly through his heavy-framed glasses and reached to take the glass from his hand. Morse scowled and turned away, preventing him. What the hell was it to Henry, of all people, what he did?

“Oh, no,” Bunny said. “Believe me, Henry is doing you a favor. You don’t want to be seen carrying that.”

“I don’t?” Morse asked.

They were laughing again. But, of course, they were drunk. Although, from the sound of his voice, maybe he was, too. Just a little. 

 “If you’re going to drink, you need to drink a man’s drink,” Bunny said, sagely. He snapped his fingers toward the bartender and then leaned forward and said something to the man, but Morse couldn’t hear the words above the pulse of the music. The bartender handed him a simple, short glass filled with amber liquid, just like the one Kay had been drinking.

 

Morse finished off the red drink and then took the glass Bunny had offered.  

 

He took a long, testing draught. He wasn’t sure whether or not he could trust Bunny’s recommendation.

 

It was strong and simple, sweet and bitter all at once, not like liquid, but like fire.

“I like it,” Morse said, drawing the glass back and examining the color in the light.  

Bunny saluted him. “So, it looks like it’s au revoir to ‘the pledge’ then.”

That gave Morse pause for just a moment, but, before he could complete the thought, Kay was by his side, taking his wrist.

 “Dance with me,” she said.

 

*****

 “So? Where were you?” Kay asked.

He was revolving slowly on the spot, watching the glimmer of diamonds in Kay’s tiara, as they slowly twinkled like stars in his peripheral vision. He wasn’t sure if he had ever danced so well in his life, actually. But then, the Scotch had left him feeling as if he was not truly present in his own body, as if he was floating.

“You might have written, you know. I thought we were friends.”  

“I couldn’t. I  . . . . I would have, if I . . . if I was able.”

She drew back from resting her chin on his shoulder, and her eyes searched his face. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Why?” Morse asked. “Do I seem different?”

“You seem . . . drunk. Do you drink now?”

“I suppose.”

Kay laughed at that, but then her expression grew serious, and she traced the corner of his mouth with one thumb. “It’s funny. You haven’t changed at all.”

He couldn’t quite say the same about Kay. She was still as beautiful as ever, but she looked older, somehow, tired. But Morse knew that wasn’t the sort of thing to tell a woman.

She lay her head back against his shoulder. “I suppose I’ve just missed having someone in my corner with that lot.”

Then she was silent for a moment, before adding, ruefully. “Bruce is having an affair, she said. “With a bus conductress of all things.”

Morse wasn’t quite sure what to say.

She sighed, then, and said, “Let’s just pretend we’re nineteen again, and everything was just as it was before all the awfulness happened.”  

For once, Morse had no argument. He wasn’t sure if he was capable of doing anything else.

“All right.”  

“You’re a better dancer than you used to be,” she said.  

 

********

 

The trouble with Scotch was, the effects it provided seemed to wear off after a time. He had to drink another and another to keep up the same level of numbness before the voices and the crowds hovered in again, far too close.

 

Morse wasn’t sure why it didn’t occur to him earlier just what a disaster the party on Lake Silence might prove to be.

 

It was a terrible idea. What on earth had he been thinking? That he might walk up to a crowd of people and ask, “I say, does anyone know what’s going on in Laboratory Four, over at Fenix Industries?”

He had uncovered a few leads to follow up on where Rebmann was concerned, but as for the truth about Dur .... that man, Morse found that, in his heart, he just didn’t want to know.

He ought to be asking questions, but he was afraid of what he might hear.

 

The night seemed to be tearing apart at the seams, the beauty turning to squalor, the magic dust turning to ashes; the couples kissing in the shadows were now clinging together as if in desperation, the laughter was harsher, more wanton. The members of the band, too, seemed to be drunk; they were hitting wrong notes, and the music—wretched stuff to begin with—degenerated into a fug of noise and confusion. While all the while, the colored lights spun on, happily oblivious to the growing chaos they fell upon.

Morse wished for nothing more than to find Tony and to leave, to walk out into the cool night air, to go back to his bed by the open window amidst a dreamworld of birds and branches. It was all just too much, this party.

His head was splitting, and the people were beginning to swim before his gaze like the numbers on the wall. Some men at the poker tables were looking daggers, like skeletal sevens, there were drunken businessmen like jovial threes and eights, and women with a slink to their walks like twos.

 The numbers were there, in the depths of his eyes, weaving and dancing and laughing and shouting, and he was powerless in the face of them. His heart raced with fear. He’d never finish. He’d never get it right.

 

He took another Scotch at the bar, but it didn’t help anymore—now, the liquid that was more like fire only made him feel worse. He was lost and he was falling away. He wished in this crowd of jumbled, featureless faces, that he might find Tony.

And then, a familiar voice came out of the madness.

 

“Oh, there you are, Pagan. I was looking for you.”

_I was looking for you_. Of all the things Tony could have said, this was what Morse had so hoped—had waited so long—to hear. The words unleashed something in him, some hidden, long- buried terror, and he turned on the spot and heard himself choke out a half-sob.

He reached forward, blindly, and took hold of the lapels of Tony’s jacket, clinging to them, twisting them in his grip so tightly that a piercing pain shot through his right hand.

 

“Pagan?” Tony asked uncertainly. He was ready to laugh, sure that Morse was making some sort of joke.

 

Then Tony frowned, looking at his right hand, which would not close around the fabric of his lapel in the same way as his left. “What the hell happened to your hand, anyway?” Tony asked. “You never said why you’re left-handed now.” 

Morse moved his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

What he wanted to say was, “ _You’re the only one. You’re the only one who would have come looking for me. If I hadn’t been such a histrionic arse, none of this would have happened. I might have been a completely different person, had a completely different life._ ” But he couldn’t form the words. He opened his mouth and only incomprehensible sounds came out.  

 

Tony’s frown deepened. “Pagan?”

 

But why did he need words, when Tony was right here, a safe harbor, sheltering him from the crashing waves of that awful music, of this godawful party?  He clung to Tony’s jacket and let his eyes flutter closed, parting his lips and pulling Tony closer.

 

But perhaps he was drunk after all. The shortest distance between point A and point B should have been a straight line, but, somehow, Morse’s mouth was brushing an edge of a cheekbone and a burn of stubble.

He opened his eyes to see that Tony had turned his face away.

“Oh Jesus,” Tony said. “You are _far_ gone.”

“Don’t you want me to?” Morse breathed, keeping his grip firm on his lapels.

“Not here. And certainly not like this,” Tony said. “No, I certainly don’t.”

“Why?” Morse asked.

“Why? I don’t know, Pagan. Twenty-six is a little old for a drunken pass, wouldn’t you say?” Tony said.

“I’m not drunk. I don’t drink. And I’m not 26.”

Tony laughed. “Wrong on all counts, I’m afraid. You certainly are. I know, believe, me. You’re three sheets to the wind. And your birthday is two months to the day after mine.”  

“I don’t remember,” Morse said. “I only remember turning 21.” He let his eyes fall closed again, and he tried to move closer, but Tony turned his face away, bracing him by the upper arms and holding him steady.

 

And then, he was laughing at him. 

 

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

 

Questions and words and words and questions. And what did they mean anyway? Life was better, after all, without any words at all. 

 

“Tony, I don’t want to talk,” Morse said. And suddenly the words were pouring out, and he could not stop them. “I just don’t want to be alone. For years and years, I felt nothing, nothing, nothing, and the world was just white. Don’t you want to feel something, Tony? Don’t you want to . . . “

His eyes drifted shut and he let himself go limp in Tony’s grasp. And why wouldn’t he take over, when Morse was making it so clear that it would be all right if he did?

 

“Oh Christ,” Tony said. “This just gets better and better.”

 

Soon two hands were taking him by the wrists, maneuvering him over to a curving and insubstantial white sofa. But he couldn’t walk properly, somehow. His knees were buckling beneath him. He began for a moment to sink to the ground, but then Tony pulled him upright.

 “Pagan,” Tony said, all traces of his usual good humor gone now. “Pagan. Get up,” he said. And, “Pagan, sit down.”

Morse sat and blinked. Suddenly, he was sitting on a sofa.

“Stay right here,” Tony said. “I’ll get you a coffee.” His made a funny little twist with his mouth and then he added. “We can set you up intravenously, if need be.” And then he turned to go.  

“Don’t leave me here!” Morse shouted.  

 

But Tony simply held up his hands. “Just stay there. Don’t move, all right? And do yourself a favor and don’t. . . don’t . . . don’t say anything to anyone.”

 

Morse did as he was told. He knew, after all, how to keep silent, how not to say a word. And he was alone and he was drifting and even Tony didn’t want him. And suddenly, his stomach churned, and his throat was burning—but not, this time, with Scotch. He swallowed, but his mouth was pooling with saliva.

Suddenly, he knew he had to get away. Or soon, he’d have no choice other than to vomit all over the elegant sofa and the soft Persian rug—one that, unlike the paintings, actually seemed to be the real thing.

Morse rose unsteadily to his feet and began walking, going back to the main hall until he came to a sweeping staircase. Upstairs it would be quiet, upstairs he could find a place to hide until whatever it was that was sweeping over him had passed.

Twice on the stairs, he had to put his hands down onto the steps ahead, to stop himself from falling. And so he made his way, crawling along, the mad pattern of the carpet on the stairs twisting and undulating and dancing under his hands, under his gaze, until he thought he might pass out right where he was.

Mercifully, he made it to an upstairs hallway, where he stumbled along, looking for a bathroom.  He opened one door after the other, only to hear moans of passion turned to shouts of anger.

Why didn’t any of these people lock their damn doors? It was absolutely obscene, it was indecent, being forced to happen upon such tangles of limbs, pale in the darkness, moving like that poor trapped aquatic creature in Sebastian Fenix’s office.

He came to the end of the hall and opened one last door, the door to a large, white- tiled bath. He bolted inside and locked the door behind him.

With the last ounce of strength that remained in the body that was no longer his body, he lifted the toilet seat up and fell to his knees. And then he vomited and vomited. The disgusting sound that it made, of the sick sloshing into the water, made his stomach clench, causing him to wretch all the more, even after there was little left. Soon, he heard himself laughing between bouts, because, God, it was a relief. His head was pulsing, and the room was spinning, and he couldn’t stand up.

 

 So, he lay down, resting his temple on the cold tile floor.

 

_And he was in a small white room, with red handprints on white walls.  The skeletal sevens looked as if their bones were poking through, just like the lines of his ribs, so fragile under the skin; it was scary to realize that they had been there all along, just waiting to show themselves._

_“Please,” he cried, and his voice was weak, it was going, it was fading into the white. “Please.” And he hated that man and he was afraid of that man and he needed that man, and how could it be that all three statements were true? They were contradictory, surely._

_“Please,” he pled. “I finished. Just open the door. Please. Please.”_

_But that man was gone, and he should be glad, because he hated that man. But he needed him, too.  And then, finally, the man opened the door._

_For one mad moment, Morse was relieved to see him, to see anyone, but then, the man was filling his small door. He straightened and, without warning, flung him to the floor, and he wasn’t like a bubble floating through a party or a leaf tumbling along a ride at the fair, but rather he was something at once both more and less substantial, like the carcass of a deer struck by a car, and he fell hard on the floor._

_He turned his face to see what was coming next, and he then furrowed his brow in confusion. He had expected a kick, but . . . but . . . but why would that man put a board over his hand?  That was odd, why would he do that? And then the hammer came down on it again and again, and something seemed to break inside of him, something other than the fine bones in his right hand._

_And I don't believe it. No, I don't believe it._

 

His head was pulsing to the beat of the pounding music downstairs, and he was fading far away, too far away, he was going, he was reaching out to the shore, but it was drifting further away; blackness was gathering at the corners of his vision.

 

And then, suddenly, he was sobbing, just quietly enough that the sound would not echo back to him in the tiled bathroom.

 

He had been alone so long, even though he was never alone. And it was woven now, somehow, into the very fabric of his being, this loneliness: He would live alone and he would die alone. It was too late for him. That was all.

 

He was a record with too many skips and scratches. One might look at it, hold it tenderly up to the light, place it with care on the turntable. But once it began to revolve? No. It was a disappointment, it was discordant, it was damaged; they only thing left for it was to toss it in the bin. Or, if it was lucky, it might be placed back in its sleeve and quietly forgotten.

 

That was the best it could hope for.

 

His mouth had been full of acid and now it was full of salt. And it was for the best, that he just lie here, that he simply give up. It was too late for him. He’d never catch up.

Even his dreams were the dreams of a child:  that he would live in a room like a garden, that he would be a police officer when he grew up, that it would turn out that his father and Gwen weren't his real parents, that some other family would swoop down out of the sky and claim him, that his best friend would fall in love with him, and they would—what, exactly? —run away together and live in a treehouse?

He let out a strangled sound then, but whether it was a laugh or a sob, he himself did not know.

 

He was a plant that had been left in darkness so that it grew all wrong.

Because, there was something broken inside of him. Because, _had_ he meant it as a kindness, that man? _Had_ he meant it as a kindness, when he had left the door unlatched that night? Morse had so much wanted to believe so.

But no, even to the last, that man had his own motivations: for in Morse, it was becoming clear, that man’s work, his legacy, lived on. It was alive, even now, in his mind full of numbers.  Even now, as he lay on the tiled floor of this elegant bathroom, he was not Morse, but rather merely an extension of that man, his mind circling with equations that woke him like angry shouts in the night.

 

 “I just want to get it right,” Morse said, and his voice was slurred; he could hardly speak.

 

He took a shuddering breath.

 

Inspector Thursday was right: it was far, far better to let it all fade away into the rear-view mirror. He should just forget about Mr. Anderson and his slovenly son and their dangerous signs, their almost deliberately careless signs, and about Professor Richmond and odd questions at bridge, about that man and about the word _Armada._

He should just forget about the German student who once sat before him, annoyed, and who later lay before him, dead.

He should forget about Singleton and Louis and whatever the hell it was that was in Laboratory Four. About cheeky waiters who winked at him and glib playboy billionaires who winked at him and elusive men who wore sunglasses in the night. And about that machine, that enigma machine, the one they had asked him about that first day at the station, that everyone seemed to have forgotten.

 

Perhaps he could be just like that machine. Perhaps he was. He sent words and numbers out into the world, but there was no match, no other machine to receive them, to interpret them. Where was it now, that device? Perhaps, even, now, Singleton and Louis were dismantling all of its gears and panels, so that it lay in pieces, its lights dimmed, its rotors stilled, in pieces, but at peace. 

 

“I am become death, the shatterer of worlds,” he muttered to the white tiled floor.

 

The band played on, on the floor below, the beat of the bass thumping in rhythm with the pulsing in his temples, and he closed his eyes, and the world retreated until it was nothing but the comforting coldness of the tile. 

 

As his vision faded, it occurred to him how funny, how strange it should be that he wasn’t sure what to hope for—whether to hope that someone would find him, or whether it wasn’t better for him to remain here, entombed in a small, white room, after all.

 

He laughed a bit at the thought, but his mouth was full of salt.

And then finally, mercifully, the world was gone.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

Morse opened his eyes to a room of stark white.

In the next moment, he gasped out loud, his breath catching with a shudder, like a thrashing wild bird, deep in his throat.

 

He had dreamt it all. It hadn't been real. 

 

And, now . . .

And now he was finally going mad.

 

He was never sure what it would feel like when it finally happened, but, somehow, he never envisioned that he would feel so calm, so certain about it.

 

He rolled over, onto a soft and thick sea-green bath mat.

No.

It wasn’t that room, after all. It was not the room of which he knew every inch better than the back of his own hand.

 

It hadn’t been a dream. It had been real.

 

He had simply drank himself into unconsciousness, just as he had so often seen his father do. That was all.

 

He slowly sat up. He was in a large and elegant cold-tiled bathroom, with glittering faucets shaped like silver swans and a silver lock on the door.

There was a lock. But he had locked it himself. And he could just as easily unlock it.

 

He rose, unsteady on his feet, and approached the door.

 

He opened it. All was quiet without. Perhaps everyone who hadn’t left the party at a more conventional hour had finally drunken themselves into a stupor, and were sleeping somewhere, just as he had been.

 

He passed down the silent hall and peeked in at the first open door. Inside, a pair of maids in uniform were changing the sheets on a bed.  The searing whiteness of the sheets, as the two women held them aloft, seemed to glow, the translucent fabric catching the bright and clear morning sun that streamed through the tall windows.

It was morning.

He had spent the entire night on the floor of a bathroom.

He ran his hands over his face and groaned.

The maids must have heard him, for they paused for a moment in their work to stare at him. Then they looked at each other and giggled.

He felt himself blush, embarrassed under their gaze, and lifted a hand to straighten up his hair. Then he went to the landing and began his slow descent down the winding stairs.

 

In the clean summer morning light, the house was stately—beautiful even—with white vaulted ceilings high enough to catch the beams of the sun through tall, flawless windows, gold scroll work adorning the walls and gleaming wood floors that shone with a brilliance like water. In the night, the house had smelled of tobacco and perfume and something else, something far too sweet, like a rare spice. Now it smelt austerely of cleaning wax and lavender.

 It was an altogether different place, reminding him of what his enigmatic host had said the night before: “Appearances can be deceiving.”

 

It was amazing, how the house could be so changed within just the span of a few hours. Before, it had held the spark and light and sound of a London nightclub; now, it ensconced all the hush and coolness of a library.

Morse looked into one of the rooms and found a couple stretched out on a couch, their legs intertwined, as pale and still as if they were marble effigies on top of a tomb. The idea that there might still be guests about left his heart beating with hope. He looked around the corner of the next room, and ventured, in a voice not far above a whisper, “Tony?”

Was Tony somewhere here, too? It seemed impossible that he would just leave him here.

 

And.

Oh, no. It couldn't . . . 

 

Suddenly, he felt his knees buckle a bit.

He collapsed into a nearby chair and buried his face in his hands, as memories of the night before tumbled in his mind like water in a fountain.

 

_“Don’t you want to feel something, Tony?”_

 

Morse moaned.

Well, of course Tony must have left without him. He would be lucky if he ever spoke to him again.

Perhaps, it would have been better, after all, to have told him the truth. Better, at any rate, then letting the remnants of it all come spilling through the cracks, as they had last night. Much easier than keeping the secret, even though the words would be hard to say.

  
The last five years had shaped him. Into someone else, something else.

  
How can you hide five years?

Suddenly, Morse wanted to be outside. Even these spacious rooms felt somehow containing.

 

He stepped out onto a pretentiously Italian-styled patio that looked out over the wide lake. The sun shone bright upon the water, and the full riot of summer moved breezing through the trees, every shade of green bundled upon green imaginable.

Closer to the house stood a large fountain, a jumble of marble horses and riders, circled around a hidden spout shooting water up into the blueness of the June sky. And, around the fountain, a fleet of expensive automobiles were parked, as if to form a fan around it.

 

Walking amongst the cars, with his hands resting comfortably on his hips, was the man he had met last night, his host, Bixby.

 

As Morse ventured over to him, he noticed that his dark hair was smoothly impeccable and that he wore a crisp white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, just as if he had not been overseeing a veritable bacchanalia the night before.

 

“A bit early, are you?” he called, when he spotted Morse. “I wasn’t taking the hydroplane out until eleven.”

 

Then his dark eyes wavered merrily over Morse’s rumpled evening suit.

“Oh. So. You never left?" he asked. 

Morse looked down at his suit, painfully conscious of how disheveled he was compared to Bixby’s immaculate air,  and tried in vain to smooth it.

“No,” Morse admitted. “I . . . . I had a bit too much to drink,” he said.

Bixby quirked a smile. “Oh. So was it you who locked himself in the bathroom, then? I wondered. I couldn’t get in to brush my teeth.”

Morse startled at this. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t know, honestly.”  

Bixby laughed. “I’m joking. I do have more than one bath in the place.”

“Oh,” Morse said, feeling his face flush. He looked down and rumpled the hair at the back of his nape. Then, feeling how tangled it already was, he tried to smooth it.

 

“Tony tells me you were at Oxford with him. And with the Belboroughs and Miss Carey and that set,” Bixby said.

“Yes,” Morse said, amending, “for a while.”

“I was at Harvard myself. But, all the important things in life, I learned at the tables. You a betting man?”

“My father played at the horses,” Morse said. “One gambler in the family is quite enough.” He tried to smile then, as if this fact were of little importance, but even to himself the smile felt like a weak thing, something that died before it had even fledged.

Bixby put his hands back at his hips and looked off into the distant trees, as if considering this.  

“You get to know the truth of a man of cards,” he mused. “I found out the truth of your friend Edmund Corcoran, I think, last night.”

 

Oh, yes. Poor Bunny.

 

“Oh?” Morse asked. “And what’s that?”

“That he’s not what he so wishes to appear. That he doesn’t really have a quarter of a million pounds.”

“No,” Morse said. “He doesn’t.”

Bixby smiled at Morse again, his dark eyes seeming always just a hairsbreadth away from laughter.

As for Morse, he felt as if his head was splitting into two. As much as he had yearned to be outside, the sunlight was somehow too bright, too close for his bleary eyes to bear.

 

He felt like a smoldering heap compared to Bixby. There was something about the man that was a little too polished, a little too perfect. Almost too perfect . . . to be true.

He tilted his head, considering the figure before him. Then, he decided that turnabout, was, after all, fair play.

“And what’s the truth of you?” Morse asked. “Sportsman? Gambler? Tycoon? Who is the real Bixby?”

Bixby’s veiled eyes picked up all the dancing lights that played rippling upon the lake, as he gave the appearance of mulling the question over.

“Well,” he said, at last, his voice rich and warm, his plummy accent flawless. “I can be anything you want me to be, I suppose.”

There was a definite purr of suggestiveness in his voice, and Morse found himself taking a step back, uncertain. 

Bixby laughed. “Ah. I’m afraid I may have shocked you. You’re probably thinking that sounds like a line.”

 Morse raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“But in my case,” Bixby said, taking a few steps toward him, closing the gap that Morse had made, “you’ll find it’s one hundred percent true. I never fail to disappoint.”

He laughed richly then, no doubt at Morse’s perplexed expression.

Then Bixby shrugged, as if he was giving up on Morse understanding. “Let’s just say I am in the import-export business, then, yes?”  

Then he nodded to the array of automobiles. “But these,” he said. “These are my real passion.”

He gestured to an ostentatious blue one. “The new Klipspringer Continental. She was delivered this morning.” He turned then, eyeing Morse thoughtfully. “Why don’t you take her for a spin?”

“Uh  . . . ” Morse said.

 

What an extraordinary conversation.

Nothing to do, he supposed, then to play along.

 

“It’s a bit too fast for me,” Morse said, pointedly. “I’d be more at home in something like .  . .” He paused, considering, and then pointed to a small red Jag. “. . . Like _that,_ maybe.”  

“She’s yours,” Bixby said.

“Don’t be ridiculous," Morse protested. "You hardly know me.”

“A gambler’s instinct. You’re a straight bat, old man. I knew it as soon as I saw you. What’s your line, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t have one, really. I’d like to be a police officer, though.”

Bixby snorted a bit at that, wrinkling his nose.

“What’s wrong with that?” Morse asked, hotly. 

Bixby shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing. I’m sure it’s a very noble profession. But well. . .” He came a bit closer, close enough so that Morse could pick up the scent of his aftershave. “It’s just. The money,” he said, conspiratorially “. . .  it’s . . . well . . . there’s not a lot in it, now, is there?”

“Not everything has to do with money,” Morse huffed.

Bixby looked at him sidelong, considering. “Ah. An idealist. It’s just as I thought, then,” he said, as if he were even more pleased with himself then he was before—if that were even possible. “You’re a straight bat. Why don’t you come and work for me for a while, while you make you mind up? I could use a good corner-man.”

“Doing _what_ , exactly?” Morse asked.

“Keeping me out of trouble in the main.”

“Why?” Morse asked. “Do you get much of that?” 

“Anyone who ever made a deal made an enemy,” Bixby mused.

“You seem to be doing all right, so far.”

“Luck of the draw, old man. Many might be damned, so that one can be saved. You might know about that, I’m sure.”

 

Morse blinked, suddenly confused. It sounded almost as if he were talking about _that_ night. But he couldn’t possibly know anything about that.

 

He wasn’t quite sure whether or not he liked this enigmatic man. He felt sorry, suddenly, that Tony would have simply left him here, alone with such a man as this.

 

“It’s a bright enough morning. Why so glum?” Bixby asked. “Or do you always look this way, old man?”

“I just hoped, I suppose that I . . . that someone would have found me. That they just wouldn’t have left me locked in that bathroom,” Morse said.

Bixby frowned. “Why should anyone have come and found you? It seems you’ve found yourself, well enough.”  

“Yes,” Morse conceded. “I suppose.”

“You _suppose_?” Bixby said, a faint crease forming between his brows. “You’re standing here, aren’t you?”

 

Bixby smiled and stepped closer then, waving his hand and pulling a gold gambling chip out from behind Morse's ear. He pressed it into Morse’s palm.

“Here,” he said. “It’s always brought me luck. You look as if you could use it more than I could.”

 

Morse looked at him uncertainly.

 

“But you don’t believe in such things as luck, do you?” Bixby said, appraising him. Then he turned and looked out over the lake. “Take a look around. It’s a wide and beautiful world. You seem awfully young to make doubt your default position.”

Morse didn’t know what to say. The stranger had some nerve, he thought, telling him how to think.

But Bixby only smiled and waved his hand again, this time pulling a key out from behind his other ear.

 

“But you’re a no-nonsense sort of person, aren’t you?” he said. “Perhaps you might find this more useful?”

 

Morse blinked stupidly at the bit of gold that shone, warm as honey, in the summer light.  

 

“It’s the key, old man,” Bixby said. “To that little red number.”

 

Of all the keys, how had he produced that one?

 

Bixby seemed to be able to read the question in his face.

 

He shrugged. “Gambler’s instinct. I’m sure you’ll make good use of it. It’s not as if I can drive all of these at once, is it?

“I can't . . . “ Morse stuttered. “I really . . . .”

Of course, he shouldn't take the car. But, the truth was, it would be a great help. He certainly didn’t want to involve Tony in any more of this.

 

And anyway, that all might be a moot point—it was possible, even probable, that Tony was no longer speaking to him.

 

With a car of his own, Morse could go to Lonsdale to see Professor Richmond. He could look up that language teacher.

He could even drive out to the Fenix Factory at night, when he’d have a better chance of breaking in, unseen.

 

He took the key, hesitantly.

 

“Thank you,” he said.

 

Then he looked down at himself. “Well, he said. “I best be going.”

“Too right,” Bixby said. “I’m sure you’ve a lot on.”

 

Bixby walked him over to the car, and Morse sunk slowly into the driver’s seat. As soon as he was settled, Morse had second thoughts.  

“Are you sure?” Morse asked. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Quite sure,” Bixby said, closing the door with a definite thunk.

 

“Well,” Bixby said, finally. “Good luck, then, old man.”

Morse nodded his thanks once more and started the engine.

“In all of your endeavours!” Bixby added, as Morse began to slowly pull away.

 

Wait.

What?

 

Morse looked in surprise at the lithe figure as he receded in the rearview mirror, but Bixby was merely smiling, his face all innocence.

There was no way he could have known his name. It must just have been the most dreadful coincidence that he had stumbled upon the phrase.

Surely, that had to be it. 

 

*************

 

 “Aren’t you due to be getting into the station, love?” Win asked.

“I worked a late shift last night,” Thursday replied, from the den window. His hands twitched the lace curtains shut, as if he did not want to get caught looking out onto the street.

 

Win sighed. She saw right through him, of course. “It isn’t as if you gave him a curfew now, is it?”

 

“What a thing to think. The man is twenty-six years old,” Thursday said.  

 

“That’s just what _I_ said. Now why don’t you come and have a cuppa, at least.”

“I just would have thought . . . ,” Thursday said. “Well, that he would have come home at _some_ point.”

 

He had seen enough parties gone wrong in the course of his career to know that nothing good happens after two in the morning.

 

“Isn’t that just how posh people are? They’re always doing that in Jane Austen novels, staying over at one another’s houses for the night,” Win ventured.

“It’s 1965, not 1825,” Thursday said. “People aren’t coming for miles in horse-drawn carriages. There are cars, these days.”  

“And anyway," Thursday said, "the doctor said he might be a bit young for his age, considering . . .” he let the rest of the sentence drop away, knowing that Win would understand what he meant. “He might be a bit over his head at some glitzy party.”

“ _Doctor?”_ Win frowned. “When did you take him to a psychologist?”

“Well,” Thursday conceded. “It was the pathologist. When I took him for his stitches.”

“Oh,” Win said. “Well, I daresay he’s right. But Morse _was_ at Oxford for at least three years, wasn’t he? I’m sure he’s fine. Perhaps they had a bit too much to drink? Doesn’t his friend Tony live nearby? Perhaps they thought it safer just to go to his house.”

“And _Lord Marston_ doesn’t own a telephone? Morse might have called, at least. And besides, the lad doesn’t drink.”

“Oh,” Win said. “Is that because his mother was a Quaker?”

“A what?”

“His mother was a Quaker. Quakers don’t typically drink alcohol, do they?”

“When did he tell you this?”  Thursday asked.

“When he was explaining his name. It’s a virtue name," Win replied. "I think it’s a common tradition. I had a friend from school whose parents were Society of Friends. Her name was Faith.”

“Ah,” said Fred.

 

When had they had all of these conversations? Morse hadn’t even told him his Christian name—he had to go over to the colleges and get some professor with hair like a dandelion clock to figure out who the hell he was. But evidently, he had time to tell Win.

Perhaps he had more time to warm up around her. It must be a good sign.

 

Just then, a flashy red convertible pulled up into the drive—some friend bringing Morse home, at last, then.

But, no.  It was Morse himself behind the wheel. He unfolded himself from the small car, looking like nothing more than a smoking train wreck on two legs.

Thursday was unable to contain his impatience a bit longer. He stormed out into the front garden.

“What time of night do you call this?”

Morse looked up, his blue eyes bleary. He held a hand up to shield his face, squinting in the sun as if it pained him. “It’s not night,” he said, simply.

“Don’t I know it? Where the hell have you been? You look a mess.” And then, as he got closer, he added, “You smell like you’ve been pickled.”  

Morse put his hands up over his ears and winced.

“Please, don’t shout so. I feel . . . I’m not . . . I’m not well.”  

Thursday snorted. “You’re hungover, is what you are. Your head hurts? Good. Teach you a lesson. No good comes of getting drunk, Morse.”  

“I can see that now,” Morse winced. “It _did_ feel good for a while though.”

“But it wasn’t worth it, was it?”

Morse shrugged.

 _“Was it?”_ Thursday repeated.

“I . . . I don’t suppose so.”

 

Thursday rolled his eyes. That wasn’t the enthusiastic response he’d been aiming for.  

 

“Now,” Thursday said, surveying the flashy car parked in his drive. “Where the hell did you get this car?”

“A man I met at the party gave it to me,” Morse said, simply.

 

Oh, Christ.

 

“What do you mean?” Thursday snapped. “Some friend of yours, right? From university?”

  
“No. I only just met him last night.”

 

Oh hell.

 

Did the lad know _anything_? Anything at all? Thinking back about the meeting he had with the lad’s father, Thursday was forced to consider that maybe he didn’t. The old crank didn’t seem as if he would bother to say _please_ when he asked Morse to pass the salt, let alone to take the time to fill Morse in on the things that any young man setting out in the world should know.

After all, wasn’t giving such a car to a young man akin to giving diamonds to a young woman? An expensive gift like this was bound to have strings attached.

Morse may be a genius, but when it came to navigating the ways of the world, he was as naïve as they come.

 

“Where are the keys?" Thursday asked.

“Why?”

“We’re taking this back right now.”

“But why? I need it,” Morse countered.  

“Why?”

“Because I have things I have to do.”

Thursday huffed a laugh. “Like _what_?”

“Just . . . things,” Morse said, evasively. “That’s all.”  

Thursday snapped his fingers for the keys. “Come on. Give them here.”

Morse put a protective hand over his pocket. “No.”

 

“Morse,” Thursday said, wearily rubbing his eyes with his thumb and index finger. “Morse. There are things you should know. When an older man gives a younger man a gift like this . . .”

“Oh, my god!” Morse shouted. He threw his arms up over his head, as if to shield himself from Thursday’s words, and started up to the house. “Oh my god! You can’t talk to me about things like that!

“Morse. You need to understand . . .”

“I was at Oxford for three and a half years!” he cried. “What? Do you suppose I’m fresh off the bus from Lincolnshire? I was reading Greats, for god’s sakes. What do you think that is? It’s all wars and homosexuals!”

 

 _“Morse!_ ” Thursday boomed, taking a look up and down the sidewalk to see what neighbors might have heard him shout the word.

 

Did he have to be so blunt about it?

 

“Well it _is_!” Morse protested. He turned on his heel as if to flee into the house, then slowed to a stop, ducked into the shrubbery, fell to his knees, and vomited.

“Oh, well, that’s lovely, that is,” Thursday said.

“I’m sorry,” Morse panted.

“I hope you’re bloody miserable. Win was up half the night with worry. Get in the house and clean yourself up before she sees you like this. I have to be going. I’m late getting into the nick. But you haven’t heard the last about this.”

“Yes,” Morse said, weakly, pulling himself to his feet. “All right.”  

 

Thursday waved his hand in dismissal and took off down the sidewalk. It was too late to bother Jakes for a ride now. He’d have to make his own way in. Besides, the walk might do his blood pressure some good.

 

 

By the time he was halfway to the station, Thursday regretted his sharp words.

The problem was, Thursday simply had no _experience_ with this sort of thing yet—no experience with the process of letting a child leave the nest, knowing when to protect, when to let him test his wings. With no idea as to how to navigate the process, he was fumbling in the dark.

As angry as Thursday would have been if Sam had stumbled home half-poisoned, at least whatever fallout occurred would have been built on a relationship forged over years.

If Morse didn’t quite know what it was to have a father, Thursday didn’t know what it was like to have an adult child. It was as simple and as complicated as that. 

And Morse was a hell of a learning curve.

 

*********** 

When Thursday came into the station, he found Jakes filing reports at a cabinet near the wood and glass-paneled door to the CID.

“Some nobs from Special Branch are here to see you,” he said, quietly. “They’re in with Mr. Bright, now.”

 

Thursday raised his brows, but nodded, grateful for the warning.

 

“They were asking me all about that incident I had with Morse,” Jakes confided.

Thursday snorted.  _Incident,_ was it? Thursday would have called it nearer to a schoolboy brawl.

“What about it?” Thursday asked, darkly.

“They wondered whether or not I thought Morse might have had the opportunity to abscond with any of those papers. Evidently, they feel there are pieces unaccounted for.”

“Pieces of _what?”_

 

Jakes shrugged.

 

“Well, what did you tell them?” Jakes asked.

Jakes’ dark brows drew together, as if he were greatly offended. “I told them certainly not,” he said, hotly. “Think I’d let the little buggar put one over on me?”

Thursday nodded. “Thank you, sergeant. For letting me know.”  

 

He rambled over, then, to Mr. Bright’s office, where two men sat before the Chief Superintendent’s desk. They turned to consider him as he came in.

 

“Ah. Yes,” Mr. Bright called. “Thursday. Here you are. Have a seat. Please.”

 

“Sir,” Thursday said, drawing up a chair.

 

“We understand you’ve taken a special interest in Durrell’s subject,” one of the men said, jumping into the matter without preamble. He was nondescript, late thirties, middling height, average build, with sandy hair. He had the perfect face and frame to blend, unnoticed, into any crowd. Must be an asset, in his line of work.

 

“That he’s been staying with your family,” his colleague added. He looked much like the first man, albeit with darker hair and a mustache.

 

“ _Subject?_ ” Thursday asked, with distaste. “You mean Morse?” 

 

“Morse. Yes,” the first man said.  

“We’ve been going through the papers found in Durrell’s office,” the second man said. “And some pieces to the puzzle seem to be missing.”

“We have it on good intelligence where some of the missing work might be. But it doesn’t, we believe, account for all of it," the first man said. 

"No. Not nearly all of it," chimed the second. 

 

Thursday furrowed his brow. He wasn’t sure where the men were going with this line of inquiry.

 

The first man then set a few crumpled papers on Mr. Bright’s desk. Thursday recognized them at once as the ones Morse had tried to destroy on his first day at the nick.

"Clive Durrell had a theory, evidently, loosely based on Nietzsche’s concept of an _übermensch,_ of an overman, of what the future of humanity should look like," he said. "In his interpretation of the term, the overman becomes almost akin to a human computer. One who would retain focus no matter what temptation to do otherwise, one who would not divert energy into language, emotion, or metaphysical questions. He would live according to a regimented schedule. Waste no time on distractions stemming from relationships or any human interactions."

 

Thursday remembered how the lad had shouted, “He’s completely oversimplified Nietzsche!”—as if he was offended on an intellectual, rather than a personal level—before attempting to tear up the papers that now sat before him.

He was _glad_ that Morse had tried to tear them up, now that he knew what they represented, even though he wished it had been for a more visceral reason.

 

Thursday huffed a rueful laugh. “Is that what these are about? No wonder the lad wanted to destroy them.”

The man with the mustache nodded, as if conceding his point.

 

“If Clive Durrell thought this was the way for a man to live, why didn’t he carry out his little experiment on himself?” Thursday asked. 

 

“He felt he was too old to change,” the sandy-haired man said. He nodded to the papers. “He was looking for someone below the age of 23 or 24. He was convinced that in our late teens and early twenties, that our minds are still malleable, not fully wired, so to speak.”

 

Thursday grunted at that. “That’s very convenient, I’m sure.” And then, because he was feeling mutinous. “I don’t blame Morse one bit for wanting to tear that rot up.”

 

The man with the sandy hair shrugged. “Indeed. But our point is, Mr. Morse is evidently somewhat . . . emotionally involved . . . in these documents. And there are also quite a few papers referring to _other_ projects Durrell was pursuing. Papers that appear to be missing. Chief Superintendent Bright has been telling us that you allowed Morse to go through the papers, soon after his discovery?”

“Yes,” Thursday said. “I thought he might have the best chance of making some sense of it all.”

“Do you think it’s possible that he might have absconded with some of the papers when he left the station? Hid them in his jacket, perhaps?”

“No,” Thursday said.

 

The men blinked.

“Really?” the man with the mustache said. “You seem quite certain.”

“He tore his stitches, tussling with my sergeant," Thursday said, slowly. "I had to take him to the doctor to have them repaired. He took his shirt half-off when he was there. He wouldn’t have had a _place_ to hide them.”

“And you haven’t seen him with any at any other time?”

“No,” Thursday said. “Perhaps that’s all there is. Whatever all this is about, I don’t think it’s finished."

 

The men were fairly smooth, highly skilled at keeping their faces impassive. But, at these words, they glanced at each other for just a moment, letting their masks slip. They looked . . . . 

They looked . . . relieved.

 

"Why do you say that?” the man with the sandy hair asked, at once.

“It’s what Morse always says. ‘I didn’t finish,'" Thursday replied.

“You're quite clear on this," the man with the mustache said. 

"Yes."

“Does he seem to have any _desire_ to finish?” the sandy-haired man asked. 

 

“No," Thursday intoned. "He always ends up saying something to the effect of 'I never cared about any of this. I was reading Greats.' I’ve been encouraging him to let the past go. The lad is young enough to start over, start a new life.”

 

“Does he say what plans he has? For the future? Is he thinking of picking up his degree? Or studying physics, perhaps?” the man with the mustache asked. 

“He wants to be a police officer,” Thursday said.  

“A _police office_ r?” the sandy-haired man asked, incredulously. 

“Right here in Oxford?” the man with the mustache asked, promptly. 

“I suppose so,” Thursday said.

 

At that, their masks seemed to fall even further. They almost seemed to sag in their seats with relief.

“That’s all Inspector,” the sandy-haired man said.

 

“Thank you, Inspector,” the man with the mustache said.

 

Then, without any further word—even to Mr. Bright, who had remained silent, sitting in his chair as if he had been watching a tennis match—they gathered their things and left.

 

What an odd conversation.

 

Could that have been, Thursday wondered. . . .

Could that have been Tweedledum and Tweedledee?

 

No wonder Morse had been so befuddled. 

************ 

Thursday followed the men out of Mr. Bright's office and headed out into the bay of desks. Jakes was still at the filing cabinet, watching Mr. Bright’s office doors with narrowed eyes.

“What’s wrong with you?” Thursday asked, approaching him. 

“I don’t know. I was just thinking,” Jakes said.

“Well, don’t sprain anything,” Thursday said. He waited for Jakes’ typical ironic smile to form at the comment, but, instead, his face remained closed, deadly earnest.

“Come on,” Thursday said. “Out with it.”

Jakes' ice blue eyes scanned his face, as if he was deliberating something. 

 

“Special Branch is looking for some papers, some missing pieces of whatever puzzle they’re trying to put together,” Jakes ventured.

“Yeah,” Thursday said. “And?”

“Morse keeps trying, you said, to work on something. Seems to need to do it. Keeps insisting that he 'has to finish.'”

“That’s rot,” Thursday said. “That’s Durrell talking. I’ve told him he doesn’t have to do any such thing.”

“So, what happens, when you find he’s working on it?” Jakes asked.

 

Where was the sergeant going with this?

 

“I tell him to knock it off, that’s what,” Thursday said.

“And what does he do then?”

“He seems glad of it. Says he never cared anything about it.”

“But yet he keeps at it.”  

“Yes,” Thursday said. “It’s damned annoying. Up all hours. It’s like when the kids were first born.”

 

Jakes looked at him, thoughtfully. “Have you ever just let him go? Given him the chance to get to the end?

“No,” Thursday huffed. “I don’t want him banging around the house all night. Besides, the last time he was pretty upset about it. What . . . what are you getting at, sergeant?”

Jakes shrugged. “Special Branch can’t find some papers that they think must exist. But what if Durrell didn’t write out all of his work on paper, to be hidden in a place? What if he hid some of it in a person?”

 

Thursday looked at him, stunned. Then he broke out into a chuckle. 

_“What?”_

But Jakes’ angular face remained sharp. He didn’t look daunted.

“Durrell had Morse. Locked up. At his beck and call. Maybe Durrell didn’t _need_ to write his plans anywhere, where they might be found. Aren’t there people with photographic memories? Maybe Morse is one of them. Durrell didn’t need to write his work down anywhere, because it’s all in Morse’s head. What better place to hide something, really, when you think about it?"

 

Thursday scowled. It all sounded rather far-fetched to him.

 

“That’s an interesting theory, sergeant,” he said. “But . . .”

“But what, sir?”

 

Thursday didn’t know quite what to say. It sounded half-mad.

But, somehow, it also sounded as if it just might be true.

****************** 

Jakes’ words seemed to follow Thursday like a flock of squawking grackles, interrupting his thoughts for the remainder of the day. They followed him as he filed paperwork, as he inquired about a stolen vehicle out in Jericho, as he shared a pint with Jakes down at the pub.

 

He’d talk to the lad, when he got home. Morse would be in a fit state by then, with any luck.

 

By the end of the day, however, Jakes' words had faded. Thursday might have forgotten them completely, if he hadn’t forgotten his hat.

 

Thursday ventured back into the largely-deserted nick, where he found Mr. Bright, alone, watching a small black and white telly they kept in a corner of the main office. The older man was looking oddly meditative.

“Sir?” Thursday asked.

 

He looked to the screen. On it, the U.S. Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara was airing his views on the arms race, on the strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction.

 

Mr. Bright sadly shook his head as he watched. 

"Sir?" Thursday asked. 

"I don't know what the world is coming to, Thursday," he said. He sighed and murmured, "I am become death the shatterer of worlds. Waiting that hour that ripens to their doom.”

 

Thursday blinked.

 

Hadn’t Morse said the same thing, as he sat amidst his nest of papers at three in the morning in his family's small den?

“What’s that, sir?”

“Hmmm?" Mr. Bright asked. 

“That quote," Thursday clarified. "What was it you said, sir?”

“Oh,” Mr. Bright said. "It’s a quote from the Bhagavad-Gita. Sacred Hindu text, you know. Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist recited it, after watching the first nuclear detonation in the deserts of New Mexico.”

 

Thursday stood stock still, allowing the words to seep in.

 

He thought he had seen it all. In North Africa. In the Smoke. But at that moment, he felt a cold wash flood through his body.

 

Just what the hell was it that the lad had been working on?

 

“I need to get home,” Thursday said. “I’m checking out the Jag.”

***************************** 

As soon as Thursday reached the house, he saw at once that the red car was gone.

Damn.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

 

He went in the front door with a bang.

“Where’s Morse?” he shouted. 

Win ventured out from the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel. “He went out, love,” she said. “Hours and hours ago.”

“Did he say where?”

“No, Fred.”

 

He tore up the stairs to their bedroom, threw himself onto the neatly-made double bed, and opened his nightstand drawer.

 

“Don’t throw it out,” Morse had pled. So he had kept the papers here. And he rifled through them now, his hands trembling. And there were formulas and equations and diagrams and oh, hell.

 

He let the papers drop and shook his head in disbelief, trying to clear his head, trying to determine what he should do next.

“Fred?” asked Win, tentatively, from the doorway. “Is everything all right?”

 

He didn’t know what on earth to say.

 

How could he tell her, that, for the past few days, they might very well have had the plans for WWIII right in their modest bedroom?

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

Lonsdale.

The two syllables conjured up a torrent of memories: of the scent of autumn leaves and old paper, of the sound of dull footfalls on marble steps, of translucent strains of weak, academic light casting onto blackboards, and of the flash of blonde hair in the sun, as a girl crossed Carfax.

A torrent of memories—yes—and an even greater deluge of emotions.

Perhaps, in retrospect, Tony had been right about his reaction to his breakup with Susan. Perhaps his behavior had been histrionic, unnecessary.

 

But those who reach greater heights have further to fall.

 

For Tony, attending Oxford had always been a certainty. His birthright. It meant little to him, one way or the other. It was simply what one did.

When Tony received his admittance letter, he had most likely taken a quick glance at it and then tossed it back onto the desk, moving on to the next letter in a pile of party invitations.  

 

When the headmaster of Morse’s school had called him into his office to inform him that he had received a scholarship, Morse had nodded, shook the man’s hand, took the offered papers, and quietly left.

But then, instead of going immediately back to class, he strode out the front door and rounded the corner, to where he could be alone, to where there was nothing behind him but a brick wall, nothing before him but deserted playing fields.

Then he slid down to the ground—his back leaning against the rough bricks—buried his face in his hands, and sobbed in disbelief. In relief. With joy. 

 

He was free.

 

There was a way out of the hopeless, unending pit that was his life, after all—a way other than suicide.

 

Up until that very moment, he had begun to suspect that there wasn’t.

 

At Oxford, he could make a new life. There, he might find people who would understand him. Maybe, even, love him.

 

And then it all happened. He saw a girl who looked like an angel crossing Carfax, and he smiled.

And, to his surprise, she glanced up and smiled back.

“Susan Fallon,” Tony had said. “You haven’t met her, yet? Dear God, I’ve known her since I was five. Her parents have her all but married off to Henry Winter.”

 

How was it, that first year, that their group had slowly come to form? How did Bruce’s one-off joke become his new name? Morse couldn’t quite remember now, all of those little details—the coincidences and small exchanges of affection that brought them all together. He only remembered that, for the first time since he was twelve, he belonged somewhere. It was enough to make one dizzy. It was a warmth felt deep in one’s chest, a happiness beyond imagining.

It was all too good to be true.

 

And then, it wasn’t.

 

“It’s not that I don’t love you. I just think . . . well, we’re not particularly well-suited, are we?”

Susan and the drip, drip, drip of her mother’s criticisms. Of her. Of him. At the end of the day, it was always going to be she and Henry. It was a fact just as certain as that one day she would attend Lady Mathilda’s.

 

Morse never belonged amongst them. Not really. He was a breeze of cool air, welcomed as a novelty into their little hothouse, but, when all was said and done, for the tropical well-tended, delicate orchids to thrive, the door needs must be shut, the highly controlled temperature of their artificial world retained.

 

The fall was fast and hard.

He was forced to understand that his original hypothesis had been true after all.

 

He simply was not made for happiness.

 

If he was going to have to learn to be alone, he thought, he might as well get started. He sat in his room, while the needle of his record player revolved serenely around the label, the song long over, without the strength or will even to get up and flip the record.

And Tony came by, and Pippa, and Kay and Bunny and once, even Bruce.

 

“You can’t afford to give up your scholarship, can you? Just stop all this at once. Christ. You’re like something out of one of your godawful operas.”  

“My friend Ava has been asking about you. She’s on a scholarship, too, you know. She's from somewhere up north. Why not ask her to dinner?”

“You’re really better off without her, you know. You would have been miserable.”

“Siegfried, old sport, get your coat. We’ll go out and we’ll pick you up a couple of girls in no time. We’ll be beating them off with a stick.”  

“I’ve never seen anything so pathetic. Do you really want to give her the upper hand? All you’re doing is boosting her overlarge ego, you do realize that, don’t you? Now turn that off and come to tutorial.”

 

And he didn’t listen. He sat in his rooms. And he didn’t want to go anywhere. And he didn’t want to talk to anyone.

And then, a few months later . . . he got his wish.

 

**********************

Morse stopped before the heavy oak door, feeling utterly drained.

 

Well, there was nothing else for it.

 

He raised his hand and knocked on the half-open door.

“Professor Richmond?” he called.

“Yes?” a voice, weedier than Morse remembered, replied. “Come in.”

Morse walked into the high-ceilinged room—a room so much like so many other rooms he had entered before, so long ago, that he felt an odd pain twist at his heart. In that moment, as he pushed open the door, he could almost bring himself to believe that none of it had happened, that he was walking right back into his old life, an errant student once more.

 

The study was lined from floor to ceiling with shelves of books, their tomes creating a haphazard pattern of color in a room that was otherwise a study in ivory and walnut. There was a scarred old desk covered in papers in the center of the room, and an oddly delicate pair of high-backed chairs with a small round table between them, set against the far wall, before a north-facing window.

The white light of the window seemed to cast all into silhouette: Morse could see the outline of Professor Richmond standing there, his white hair forming a translucent halo around his head, but he couldn’t clearly see the expression on his face, backlit as he was, in the cool and dark room.

 

“Hello, sir,” Morse said.

“Ah,” Professor Richmond said, pausing as he placed a paper onto his desk. “And how might I be of assistance, Mr. . . . ?”

“It’s Morse, sir. Don’t you remember?”

He tilted his head, considering.

“Sorry,” he said. “But I'm afraid I can’t quite place you.”

“I was up in '56,” Morse said. “I was reading Greats.”

The professor stepped forward, and the light from the hall brought his face into focus, made his features clearer, clear enough that Morse could see the befuddlement there. 

“No. No,” he said. “Sorry.”

“It’s no matter," Morse said. "I was here, actually, to ask about another student. Erik Rebmann? West German? He came up, perhaps around ’54?”

“Again,” Professor Richmond said. “You flatter me. I’m lucky if I can remember last term, never mind the better part of ten years ago.”

“He attended a lecture series you gave. On Milton,” Morse prompted.

Professor Richmond raised his bushy, white, flyaway eyebrows. “That’s of little aid, I’m afraid. I give that series about once every other year.”

 

Morse took a deep breath. In for a penny, in for a pound, as the saying goes.

 

“You might have partnered him at bridge, once,” he said. “Possibly. You might have asked him how he _felt about his country_ ,” Morse added, weighing out his words carefully.

Professor Richmond gave him a sharp look. One that was . . . just perhaps . . . a bit frightened?

“ _Might_ have? How would you know about any private conversation I might or might not have had with a former student? What an extraordinary conversation. Tell me young man, are you quite well?”  

 

Morse wanted to say: I know because you once had the same conversation with me.

 

But before he could, Richmond took yet another step closer; there was something in is his face that gave Morse pause, something in his eyes, in the focus of them, that was off: it was as if the man was looking right through him, as if he was looking into another world.

It was the face of a fanatic. Of one who put ideas ahead of people.

  

“What is all of this about, exactly?” Professor Richmond asked.

“If you don’t remember, it doesn’t much matter,” Morse shrugged, already beginning to back out of the room. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

 

He nodded and went out the door, his heart racing so loudly he could hear it beating, pulsing in his ears.

 

He desired nothing so much as to leave. He never should have returned here. He should have known it would all just be too much. 

 

Morse was just nearing the doors leading to the lawns, when the bursar called to him.

“Have a nice catch up with Professor Richmond, then?” he asked. Morse stopped at the door. There was something in the man’s voice that was familiar; Morse knew at once that he had been there in his day.  He pored over his memories, and came up with a name. Mr. Davis.

“No,” Morse said. “He didn’t remember me."

“What do you mean, _he didn’t remember you_?” the bursar asked, sharply. “He was the one who told that copper who was in here the other day about you.”  

“What?” Morse asked.

“A detective was here. Asking about a Morse. About a week ago, or so. He seemed dead certain it was someone in mathematics, so I didn’t think of you, at the first. I thought perhaps it might have something to do with . . . with that Clive Durrell and Michael Adams business. You know,” he said, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “The Lonsdale Moral Science Club. Those murders.”

Morse swallowed. Then he nodded, faintly.

“I knew that you  . . . I knew that you would have naught to do with that set. I thought it must be Morse Fox-Hudgens-Browne the detective was after. But, when I showed him the photograph of Browne in the hall, he said, no, that wasn’t the Morse who he was searching for. And that’s when we bumped into Professor Richmond.”

“And he said it might be me? Professor Richmond?”

“Yes. The detective said it was someone with lighter, wavier hair than Morse Fox-Hudgens-Brown, and the professor said, ‘that sounds like Morse.’ Sent him off to talk to Professor Lorimer.”

 

Morse blinked. How could the man say he didn’t recognize him if he somehow remembered who his tutor was?

“Thank you,” Morse said quietly.

The man touched his round hat by way of farewell.

 

Morse wandered outside into the summer light, with little attention to spare to the trees and gardens around him. His thoughts were firing and misfiring, as he struggled to make sense of it all.   

 

Inspector Thursday was right to have laughed at him.

 

“If I were a detective I’d just ask, and people would have to answer me,” Morse had said, petulantly.

 

He didn’t know, then, that the questions that people _didn’t_ answer often told you as much as the ones that they _did._

 

Why would Professor Richmond pretend not to know him, when he seemed to have remembered him clearly enough when Inspector Thursday was here? And had he _truly_ forgotten Erik Rebmann?

 

_"I love treason but hate the traitor."_

Was Rebmann betrayed perhaps, by the very person who had recruited him? If so, it would make sense for Richmond to have claimed to have known Rebmann so little that he had forgotten all about him now.

 

And he, Morse, —a few days ago, he had been only a shadow, a distant memory. What harm was it to tell Thursday about him? Richmond might have been grateful, even, for any diversion from his own affairs.

But now. . . . now did Richmond realize that he was not just a shadow after all? That he, too, was part of this game?

 

Morse couldn’t help but wonder if he had made a mistake, talking to the man.

He felt, somehow, as if he had given away far more than he had gotten.

 

********

Morse took the brass ring in his hand and knocked smartly on the freshly-painted blue door. Perhaps Mathilda Bagshot would remember Rebmann better than Professor Richmond had purported to.

 

It wasn’t long before a woman answered the door, an older woman with short and stylish graying hair, wearing a white collared shirt, green jumper, and tweed skirt. There was something in the firm and determined lines of her face, however, that belied her matronly dress. 

“Miss Bagshot?” Morse asked.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to trouble you, but I was hoping to ask you about a former student. We’ve . . . we’ve rather lost touch, I’m afraid, over the years.”

“And who is that?”  

“Erik Rebmann.”

She grimaced for a moment, considering him. “Ah,” she said. She stepped aside then, and opened the door further.  “Well," she added, shortly. "Come in.”

 

She led him into the sitting room of her prim and tidy, immaculate home. A vase of roses bloomed in the front window, so perfect as to look artificial. The coffee table was so polished one could use it as a mirror, and every throw pillow on the sofa sat measuredly in its assigned place.

She gestured for him to sit down on the long sofa, and he did so, carefully, so as not to disturb the perfect precision of the pillows.

 

“Rebmann?” Miss Bagshot mused, sitting in a chair across from him. She sat with her back perfectly straight, her strong, slender hands clasped in her lap. “Rebmann. Rebmann." Her eyebrows shot up. "German?”

“Yes. He came up, maybe in ’54.”

“Well,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of pupils over the years.”

“I believe he was from Stuttgart. Wavy dark blonde hair?”

“Ah, Rebmann,” she said, at last. “Yes, I remember him. I believe he came to me for a while."

“Would you . . . “  . . . and this would be difficult, this would all be pretense, for Morse knew quite well the man was dead. “You wouldn’t happen to have his last address, would you? I was hoping to get in touch.”

She laughed. “I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I hadn’t seen him in nearly ten years. I can scarcely remember much about him.” 

 

“He was a student, I believe, of Alexander Richmond’s,” Morse said.

 

He let the name fall, with all of its implications, his eyes darting across her stoic face.

 

And that’s when she dropped her mask. She looked at him, her face cold and impassive.

“Mr. Morse,” she said “You’re either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.”

 

Morse startled; he was sure he hadn’t told her his name.

“You seem like a decent enough young man, so perhaps it’s the former. You are involving yourself in matters that are far, far over your head. Matters that are of no concern to you whatsoever.”

 

The words felt almost like a kick, straight to the gut. Because of course it was his _concern_. It had been his life. And what had been the point of it all?

 

“No concern?” Morse snapped. “It was f  . . .” But then he bit the sentence off, mid-word.

 

“Five years?” Miss Bagshot prompted.

 

Morse swallowed. She knew.

 

She looked at him sternly, then, coldly, all pretense abandoned. “You had your instructions from Special Branch,” she said.

“How do you know about that?” Morse asked.

"You can’t be that naïve," she said. She huffed a rueful laugh. "The world is divided in two. Freedom on one side, the Russians on the other, and a bloody great wall separating the two of them. It’s a war of shadows. And you’ve played a greater part in it than you might know.”

“Five years,” he said, and his voice was barely a whisper. “I can’t just forget them.”

“You’ll get over it,” she said. “You’ll forget.” Then she leaned forward in her seat, her gaze unwavering. “You’re being allowed a wonderful opportunity, Mr. Morse. You’ve already thrown away one in your young life, haven’t you? I’d advise you not to do the same with the second.”

“So, what are you saying, exactly?” he asked.

“Retrace your steps.”

“To where?”

“To where you were told to go.”

“And where’s that?”

She leaned back in the armchair and laughed, a brittle laugh that sounded almost as if it carried the hint of a threat. “To Fenix, of course.”  

 

Morse looked at her in surprise.

 

She smiled. “Just follow your instructions. And then walk away.”

“What if I can’t? What if I can’t just walk away?”

 

She leaned forward then, and said with a surprising hint of malice in her voice, “Then I’ll light a candle for you.”

 

Morse stared at her for a moment. And swallowed. 

 

Then, he stood up abruptly. “Fine. Fine. I’ll. I’ll try, then. I'll. . . I'll try." 

She nodded with satisfaction, her expression changing entirely, as if he had fallen back into her good graces.

He was just turning to leave when he stopped and asked, “But why me?”

 

She shrugged, as if the question was not of much interest to her. “Because you know what you’re looking for, don’t you Mr. Morse?”

Morse said nothing, and went quietly out the door. 

 

So. He was to follow orders. And not ask questions.

 

It was a shame that those were two things he was never very good at, really.

 

But, as he had so often thought before: the only way out was through.

 

He went back out to the red convertible in the drive and turned the key in the ignition. Darkness was beginning to fall. It would be this night that he would make his stand. This night, now or never.

 

*****************************

The first maxim of detective work, Thursday found early on, was really just a bit of common sense.

When you can’t find what you’re looking for, retrace your steps.

Or, try retracing someone else’s, as the case may be.

 

The last person that Thursday has seen Morse with was Anthony Donn, when Donn had come to collect him for that party.  With any luck, the lad would have given him some indication of what he might be planning, what he might be up to.

It was clear enough to Thursday—especially after the bizarre and almost pointless conversation with the men from Special Branch—that, whatever the hell Morse was involved in, he was far out of his depth.

 

**** 

The same liveried butler whom Thursday had met on his first visit to the earl’s home greeted him at the door and led him straight to Anthony Donn’s study.

Donn looked up from his desk wearily at the sound of their footsteps. He was as well put-together as ever, at first glance—but there was a tiredness around the eyes, a certain drawn quality to his face.

 

“Inspector Thursday, my lord,” the butler announced.

“Hello, Inspector,” Donn said, airily. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Actually, I've been looking for Morse. I was wondering if you could tell me when  you saw him last?”

Donn widened his eyes in surprise. “Don’t tell me he’s disappeared again already?” he said, with a hardness that surprised him. He looked back down at his paper, a crease forming between his eyes. “I shouldn’t worry, Inspector. I’m sure he’ll resurface in another five years.”  

“I don’t think he’s disappeared, as such. I think he might be  . . . off somewhere. I wondered if he might have given you any inkling as to what he’s planning?”

“No,” Donn said, pointedly. “He hasn’t told me a thing.”

 

Thursday paused, considering. If Donn hadn’t any idea as to where Morse may have gone, he might at least know something about the last person he seemed to have spoken to, the man who gave him that ridiculous car.

 

Thursday cleared his throat and began again. “Morse showed up at the house this morning, driving a fairly expensive red convertible. I wondered if you might know who had given it to him?" 

Donn looked up at that, sharply. “This _morning_? Bixby told me Pippa dropped him by your place last night. He was too drunk scarcely to stand.”

“No,” Thursday replied. “He didn’t come back until late this morning.”

 

Donn frowned then, looking perplexed. “Perhaps Bixby thought I was talking about someone else?”  he said, almost more to himself than to Thursday.

 

“Who’s Bixby?” Thursday asked.

 

Anthony Donn shrugged. “Everyone knows Bixby. He bought that vulgar pile across the lake, the one that’s been empty since the Buchannans went bankrupt.”

 

Thursday filed the information away, with a grim nod; that would be the next place he would check.

 

Donn must have noticed the change in his expression, for his face, too, turned solemn.  “You don’t . . . You think he’s in trouble, don’t you? Pagan?"

“Yes,” Thursday said. “I suppose I do.”

There was a silence then, as each man lapsed into his own thoughts. Then, Donn asked, “Where was he, all of that time? He wasn’t in the army, was he?”

“I don’t think I can tell you that.”

“Well, _he’ll_ never talk about it.”

“No,” Thursday said heavily. “Maybe he won’t.”

Donn tilted his head. “Why was it that you came to ask about him, the other day? I was surprised to see he was staying right at your house. Why didn’t you simply ask _him_? Why come all the way out here?”  

 

A fair enough question, Thursday decided, since they had intruded twice now on the man’s time.  

 

“I did ask him,” Thursday, replied, “But. . . he wasn’t talking at all, when we found him.”  

“When you _found_ him? What the . . . ? He wasn’t even _talking_? What happened?”

“I don’t think. . . .”

“You don’t think you can tell me. . . Yes, I know,” he said sharply.

 

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. I’m a bit hungover, if you want to know the truth.” He sighed. “Well, if Pagan showed up in some flashy car, that had to be given to him by Bixby. He’s the only one I can think of who would make some grand gesture like that. The man’s a showman, through and through.”

Thursday nodded. “Thank you,” he said. "Sorry to have troubled you." 

He turned to leave, but Donn called him back. 

“Inspector?” he began, uncertainly.

“Yes?”

“Would you . . . ?" Donn began again. Then he shook his head. "Oh, the hell with it. Never mind.”

Thursday nodded once more, and with a flash of greatcoat, he turned and headed out the door. 

 

 

To hell with it, Donn had said. But Thursday would bet his hat that what Anthony Donn had _meant_ to say was: to hell with _him._

God only knew what had occurred between them. The lad certainly seemed to have a way of stepping on people’s toes.

 

Thursday could only hope that Morse was handling himself a bit more smoothly while he was out on whatever inquiry he was pursuing right now, wherever he was. 

 

 ***********

Thursday found the place easily enough, but he could see right away that something was wrong.

Anthony Donn had said that there had been a party here just the night before, but at first glance, the house looked deserted, as quiet and forgotten as an old tomb.

He walked up to the silent, stone house and knocked on the door, even though every instinct he had told him no one was there. He tried the knob, and the door opened.

Inside the great house, all was hushed and quiet. The furniture, the sculptures that stood in corners, the grand piano in the entrance hall, all were covered in white sheets. Not even a few mote of dust was to be seen circling in the slants of dying summer light.

“Mr. Bixby?” he called.

There was no answer, save his own, echoing voice.

Nor had he expected there to be.

On an ornate mahogany table, Thursday found one fluted glass, the tiniest trace of champagne sparkling at the bottom.

It was the only sign that there had been a party here at all.

The only sign of any so-called Bixby.

 

************************

Morse crouched behind some shrubbery outside the tall, iron gates of the Fenix factory. It was getting late, the sky long since turned from violet to indigo in the west, and to dull black in the east.

Unfortunately, the cover of night was no help with the glaring floodlights.

What he really needed was a distraction. Someone or something to catch the attention of the guard in the security booth, so that he could get past, so that he could at least make it to the shadowed perimeter of the building.

 

And then the needed distraction came, in the form of a loud, rumbling truck.

 

The guard in the booth went out to meet the driver, passing him a clipboard. The guard’s back was turned to him, the churning of the truck’s engine loud enough to drown out his footsteps—it was the perfect moment to run through the gates.

 

Morse kept low, running in the darkness, until he reached the door. Then, he pressed himself into the dark corner of a side entrance way and waited. He wasn’t sure if it was five minutes that had passed or fifteen, but, eventually, a man in a white lab coat came out the door where Morse was poised, waiting. Morse pressed himself up firmly against the wall so that the door would not touch him as it opened, so that he would not afford the Fenix employee any sign that there was something—or, rather, someone—hidden behind it.

 At the last moment, right as the door was beginning to close on its hinges, Morse reached out and held the handle, so that the door would not shut immediately. And, as the man in the white coat went out, Morse slid around the door and went in. 

 

He was much faster this time, his steps more purposeful. He followed the route of the tour he had been on with Tony, on that afternoon that now felt like an age ago.

 

He went down the long hall, to the room filled with desks, and picked up a clipboard as he passed without slowing his steps for an instant. It was a better cover than nothing, should he need to bluff his way out of something. He could hardly say he was on a tour at this time of night. 

 

Finally, he came to Sebastian Fenix’s office, pushing open the heavy door. All lay in darkness and stillness--the place was lit only by the eerie light of the snakefish’s tank, which glowed like the holy grail in a dark cavern.

Fenix had seemed so self-assured. So haughty in his bearing. He had flaunted the fact that he had seen Morse on the tour from the very beginning. Dropped broad hints about what fate might await him if he was caught in his office again. 

 

Of course, the man would hide whatever it was he was hiding right in his desk.

 

Morse made a beeline for it, opening the drawers one by one. He knocked on the bottom of the largest drawer and was rewarded with a hollow sound. The drawer had a false bottom. He popped it open.

 

And saw his own handwriting looking back at him.

 

His breath caught high in his throat.

 

He had been right, all along. This is just what they all meant. That he would know what he was looking for.

 

He picked the papers up and found the others had been right all along, too. He was pathetic. He was a thing all together pitiable.

Because, at the mere sight of these old papers, he found that he was trembling, he felt as if he was coming to pieces at the seams. 

 

The papers were a few years old, at least. It was his old handwriting, the small and loopy script he had almost forgotten. The curved twos, the quickly rounded eights--they were like numbers written by a stranger. Someone he had never known and now never _would_ know.

He rifled through them, and the handwriting changed abruptly, from curved and minuscule, to clumsy and back slant, gradually growing neater page by page, as he had settled into his new life, his new place.

He fisted the papers tightly; at that moment he wanted nothing so much as to tear them to shreds.

He hated them all: Singleton and Louis and Miss Bagshot for making him come back here, for making him look at these things.

 

Although, wasn’t this just what he wanted? To see them? To know the truth?

But holding them didn’t bring him any closer to understanding them. Would he _ever_ know what it had all been about?

He didn't know what he wanted. He was a problem without any solution, an equation whose sides would not balance, would not come out evenly. And he'd never get it right. 

 

 

With shaking hands, he thrust the papers into his jacket and went to shut the drawer. He'd give this to those two men, and to hell with it, he'd forget all about it.

 

He went to slam the desk drawer shut, the quicker to flee from the office. But, as he started to close it, he heard the slide of something else in the hidden drawer.

Curious, he reached in and pulled out an old and battered copy of _The Canterbury Tales._

 

Morse scowled, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin.

 

Saucy puns and randy bits aside, Morse couldn’t quite see Sebastian Fenix as someone who might be interested in reading an epic saga in Middle English.

 

He carried the book over to the light of the snakefish’s tank and flipped through the pages.

Page 24 was circled.

24.

Canterbury Tales.

He paused to think, watching the poor aquatic creature circle as it flashed and writhed its way through its tank, past neon red plastic plants and over a treasure chest. A treasure chest that contained a flash of gold.

 

 

And Bixby had held a bit of gold before him that had shone as warm as honey in the summer light.

It was a key, that Bixby had held. 

And it was a key in the aquarium treasure chest.

A key.

24.

Canterbury . . . Road?

Canterbury Road. In North Oxford. Running just south from St. Hugh’s College, between Woodstock and Banbury Road.

There was a hidden key.

Could there also be a hidden address?

 

Or would Inspector Thursday say he was making too many connections? Connections that weren't there?

 

Morse walked slowly over to the tank, unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up his sleeve to the elbow. He stood, then, and waited—waited for the snakefish to undulate its way to the opposite side of the tank. Just as it was beginning to make its pacing turn, Morse plunged his hand into the water.

The snakefish lunged, but Morse pulled his hand away with a splash of water. 

And Morse held the key.

 

And, in that moment, he made his decision. 

He did not want to see all of the details, to have the past brought back fresh before his eyes. 

 

But the larger picture? Yes. He wanted to know what it had all been about. How all the pieces fit. He just could not walk away otherwise. 

He'd never be able to walk away until he understood. 

 

He would turn the papers over to Singleton and Louis.

But this, he thought, as he pocketed the key--This would be his own affair.

***************

Morse slid out of the darkened office and back out into the maze of hallways, toward the opposite side of the building, until he stumbled upon a hall of doors with industrial metal wheels in the place of doorknobs, numbered in stenciled print. 1, 2, 3 . . . and at the end of the hall, 4.

He turned the wheel and went silently into a room that stood as wide and vast as an underground cavern, a room that seemed to be made entirely of metal—there was no color at all under the low lights, save industrial gray and shadow.

 

But Morse—he was silent and he was a shadow. Louis and Singleton were right, after all; they were spot on. He was perfect for the job. Miss Bagshot, too, was right. It was a war of shadows. He ran along the battleship gray walls, away from the low lights, and he was silent and he was a shadow and no one ever knew he was there. That he was right there, all along. 

 

He came to a series of tall tanks and paused. What was inside? Was it the secret to Laboratory 4?

 

He ran up one of the metal ladders to the grated top walk.

 

And found a flaw in the plan.

 

He might have run silently along concrete floors, but there was no masking the terrible metallic, echoing sound of his footsteps on the steel ladder. He paused, mid-flight. And stepped cautiously forward.

It was one of those awful sort of ironies—the quieter he tried to be, the more loudly his steps sounded, ringing through all the tubes and pipes that strung in and out of the place, making it a maze, a tangle, a huge industrial-gray ball of metal yarn.

From the floor below, Morse heard hurried, clipped footsteps, saw the flash of a white coat, the only bit of light reflected under the dull and low florescent tubes. Someone was coming to check on the disturbance. 

 

There was nowhere else to go, then, but up. 

 

Morse scurried up the remainder of the steps, trusting, hoping that the sounds of his own steps would be masked by those of the man in the white lab coat. Once he reached the top, he fled down along the top walk, to the dimmest stretch of it he could find, to the point between two ladders, and pressed his back against a large metal tube behind him, hoping to blend in with it. Hoping to disappear. To lose his voice. To be a mere shadow again.

 

He looked down through the grated top walk, and, through the metal grid, saw the man looking up, curiously.

The man started over toward the ladder, and Morse’s heart beat wildly in his chest. He could scarcely breathe. He hadn't even remembered to bring that ludicrous clipboard from Fenix's office. What possible excuse could he have for being here at this time of night? 

 

Once the man reached the top, Morse would have only a fifty-fifty chance of escape. If the man turned to the right, if he went in the opposite direction, Morse might have the chance to slink away in the darkness. But if the man in the white coat turned left, towards him, he’d be trapped. He could stay here, and be caught, or run, and allow the sounds of his footfalls ringing on the steel grid to give him away.

Morse closed his eyes for a moment, silently willing the man to go the other way.

He swallowed hard and tried to still his unsteady breathing, realizing that his chances were only as good as the flip of one of Bixby’s gold gambling chips.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Morse (finally) gets some answers :0)  
> And then Morse discovers some answers of his own.  
> And then, the story concludes with a lot of angst and h/c, eventually mellowing into domestic fluff!   
> Thanks so much for reading :D


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, yikes! I hope the first half of this doesn't move too slowly! "Explanation scenes" work better in the show, I think, where they can cut to a montage of flashbacks! Hmmm.......

 

Morse pressed himself up against the metal tube behind him—so closely that he could feel the cold of it through the back of his thin shirt—trying to blend into the shadows. The man in the white lab coat was poised at the bottom of the stairs, looking up, his face glowing in the lowlights, illuminated enough that Morse could read the curiosity there.

 

The man put his hand on the metal railing to begin his ascent, when a loud voice called out, seemingly out of nowhere.  Just then, a second man, dressed in a navy blue security guard uniform, his dark hair shining blue black in the odd light, walked out to him, emerging right out of the darkness.

 

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, holding out a clipboard. “Delivery truck’s here. I need your signature on this, so it can come through.”  

The man in the lab coat stopped and turned toward the guard. “What’s this?” he asked. “Which truck did you say?”

And Morse did not wait. He scurried along as swiftly as he could, while remaining as quiet as he could, taking advantage of the distraction, moving along until he reached the end of the top walk, until he reached the last in the series of tanks.

In the distance, he could still hear the voices, the booming, carrying voice of the security guard, the waspish one of the man in the lab coat. They seemed deep in conversation.

Well.

There was no point in going through all of this if he was going to leave empty handed.

Morse stepped up onto his toes so that he could see down into the last tank. It was filled with water . . . and something else. Morse reached his hand down, just as he had in the snakefish’s tank, and this time, instead of a key, he pulled out an odd, waxy substance. It smelled like dead sea life.

He put it in his other pocket.

 

It was a childish thing to do, and he would have been embarrassed had there been anyone about to see him—but—at the last set of stairs— the inspiration struck. Rather than running down the echoing and clanging metal steps, he turned around, threw one long leg out over the railing, and slid silently down, leaving only the hushed sound of whispering fabric in his wake. The railing ended a mere ten feet from a door. He ran to it, threw it open, and flew out into the night, running now at full throttle toward the high, chain-link fence. He leaped onto it and began to climb, his hands cutting into the wire, until he reached the top. He swung one leg out and scrambled over it, falling with a swoosh to the ground on the other side.

His feet hit the ground. And he was out.

And he was running now, as hard as he could, his lungs burning. He was out.

He had made it out to the sidewalk that ran along the main road, when he saw a van’s headlights snap on, like a startling pair of eyes opening in the darkness. Morse froze in his tracks.

As it passed, Morse saw the familiar face of Louis, there, in the passenger seat. The man nodded to Morse and then jerked his head toward the back door.

Morse didn’t need further convincing.

 

The devil you know, after all.

 

He ran up, slid open the van door, and leaped into the back seat. As soon as Morse closed the door, Singleton, at the wheel, accelerated, and they headed off, away from the factory.

 

“Well?” Louis asked.

 

Morse put his hand into his jacket and hesitated. He wasn’t sure how he felt, now that he had them, about handing over those papers. He wanted a bit of time, he wanted to look at them, to see if he could make out what, exactly, they were all about. So, he reached for the waxy, gray substance he had pulled from the tank instead.

 

“You wanted to know what’s in Laboratory Four,” Morse said.  

He pulled the odd lump out of his pocket and placed it in Louis’ outstretched palm.

“Ambergris,” Louis said.  

Morse remembered hearing the term somewhere before. “It’s secreted in the guts of sperm whales. It’s used in perfume,” he ventured.

“As a fixative,” Singleton confirmed, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. “That’s right.”

“Rare as hen’s teeth and worth its weight in gold. Quite literally. However, fresh stuff is virtually useless to perfumiers. It takes twenty years of immersion in the sea to produce the white, high-end stuff,” Louis explained.

 

Morse was singularly unimpressed. He had just risked being arrested for criminal trespass, or worse, to prove—what, exactly? That a perfumier had a main ingredient found in perfume on his premises?

 

“So?” Morse asked. “He’s curing his own. So, what?”

“So . . . “ Louis said. “How many tanks did you see?”

 

This gave Morse pause. There were at least forty of them in that cavernous room.

Louis, reading Morse’s expression, raised his eyebrows knowingly.

 

“How’s he coming by so much raw ambergris?” Morse asked.

“Mmm,” Singleton said, a bit grimly. “How indeed. That’s what Erik Rebmann wanted to know.”

“He was working for you, wasn’t he?” Morse asked. “Erik Rebmann?"

“Yes,” Singleton said, his eyes meeting Morse’s once more in the mirror before returning to the road. “He was recruited when he was a student at Oxford. He got a job with Fenix, passing himself off as a translator. He always had a gift for languages, Rebmann did. He accompanied Fenix on a trip to Geneva, where he found himself working on a deal Fenix struck with Russian Baltic whalers there.”

“As you know, that sort of trade with the Soviets is strictly verboten,” Louis chimed in.

 

“Fenix couldn’t keep a financial contract like that under wraps,” Morse said. “Such large exchanges of cash— that would be difficult to hide.”

“It certainly would,” Louis agreed with a snort.

“So . . . . he needed something to barter with,” Morse ventured. “To make an exchange that would leave no record, that would escape detection.”

“The Fenix factory also did work for the chemical warfare boys at Porton Down. Always something new coming out of Porton,” Louis said.  

 

Morse startled at that.

“He told me,” he said.

 

Louis blinked, making a dramatic little double-take. “ _Who_ told you?”

“Sebastian Fenix. I went on a tour, as you had suggested, to get a sense of the place. I got caught having a shufti in his office. He assumed I was a student, Fenix, that I was there as some sort of a RAG week prank, so I played along. And then he told me that one half of the facility was devoted to pharmaceutical research, for the government. That if my ‘little friends’ and I persisted in our pranks, we could find ourselves in ‘ _hot water_.’”

Louis raised his eyebrows, as if impressed by this subterfuge.

Morse shrugged. All he had done, really, was to encourage Fenix’s faulty assumption.

 

“Well, he wasn’t wrong. He has been awarded several government contracts,” Louis said, adding pointedly, “Contracts that have been valuable to him in _more ways than one.”_

“So, he was playing the game from both ends?  Accepting contracts for the British government, then turning around and giving the information garnered to the Soviets in exchange for access to ambergris?” Morse ventured.  

“Yes, although up until now, we couldn’t prove it. Now that you have shown us,” he said, holding up the ambergris, “that Rebmann was on to something, we can do something about it.”

 

Morse snorted, “Arrest Fenix, presumably.”

“Nothing so heavy-handed,” Singelton said, curtly.

“Why on earth not?”

 

“The situation is delicate . . .,” Louis said.  “Once Fenix had access to so much ambergris, he came out with a whole new line of perfumes. Including Vespertine. A top seller. Fenix wanted more ambergris, to keep up with consumer demand.  But he had nothing left to negotiate with. And that’s where Clive Durrell and Michael Adams, two dry and dull mathematics dons—the last people one might suspect of high-stakes dealings—came in.”

 

At once, Louis’ comedic tone changed. “Do you have the papers then, too?” he asked, shortly, his eyes watching him carefully. “What did you find in Fenix’s office? Did you get that far?”

 

For a moment, Morse remained silent. This was harder than handing over the ambergris. This was work written by his own hand. Five years of his life that he didn’t understand. If he kept it, if he put it all together, if he could only finish, he could at last have the chance to see what it was, exactly, what he had spent his days and nights on.

He would know the secret, the forbidden knowledge that that man, in his dour and alarming and terrifying silences, had never deigned to share.

 

Morse put his hand inside his jacket. He could feel the papers, rustling like feathers, right there, right near his heart. He could pop this van door open and run. He could see at last, what no one would tell him. He could, in a sense, erase his past.

 

Because it plagued him no end, the question: Why had he given up asking? How had he allowed himself to become so beaten down? Almost to the point that he was nothing: that he was silent, that he was a shadow? An automaton who no longer thought to ask questions, who simply did what he was told?

 

How had he become someone . . . so unlike himself?

 

He put his hand on the handle of the van door, and Louis’ warm brown eyes darkened, his body tensed. Suddenly, he wasn’t Tweedledum. Suddenly, he looked deadly serious.

Morse realized then: If he ran now, he’d spend his life running.

If he ran, they would follow him.

And the first place they would look for him would be the Thursdays’.

As much as Inspector Thursday—if he were in Morse's situation—would want to get at the truth, he would not, Morse was sure, risk the chance of something following him behind the hat stand.

 

Reluctantly, Morse pulled the papers from his jacket. “I went to Fenix’s office first,” he admitted, passing the bundle into Louis’ hand.

Louis seemed almost to sag with relief.

 

“Fenix bought these documents from that man, so that he would have more to negotiate with, the next time he met with the Soviets,” Morse said, and it was a statement, rather than a question.

 

Louis nodded grimly.

 

But it was a statement that led to another question.

 

“But _why_?” Morse asked. “Why would that man sell them? Wasn’t that rather reckless? Didn’t he realize the Soviets would find out that he was selling things to Fenix rather than handing the papers over to them?”

 

In the front seat, Louis and Singleton glanced at each other. It was as if they were deliberating on how much to tell him.

 

“As we said at our last meeting, we had suspected Durrell of working for the Soviets for some time. But he must have become suspicious, he must have known he was being tracked, because suddenly, he went silent. All communications ceased. The documents we _did_  intercept could not be definitively traced to one man. We looked for a link, but, for years, found nothing.”

 

Morse said nothing: he read between the lines there.

They hadn’t known about _him._

No one had known about him.

 

“Around nine or ten months ago, Durrell suddenly got our attention again,” Louis continued.  “At the start of the academic year, he began holding meetings at his house, with Michael Adams and seven students."

“The Lonsdale Moral Science Club,” Morse supplied.

“His plans with his little cabal grew more and more grandiose. And that’s when Durrell grew careless. He went rouge.”

 _“Rogue_?” Morse asked, perplexed.  

 

“He was no longer working for the Soviets. He was working only for himself. He didn’t care who he sold his plans to—so long as he sold them to the highest bidder,” Singleton said.

“And he sold those papers to Fenix,” Morse supplied. “Fenix was doing so well, that he wanted more material to trade for greater access to ambergris.”

 

Louis nodded.

 

“And when Fenix showed some of those papers to the Soviets, they said nothing to Fenix, but they knew. They knew they were that man’s. They knew that that man had betrayed them. That he had sold the documents to Fenix, rather than delivering the papers to them.”

 

“Yes. And had him, and all of his followers, eliminated,” Singleton said. “Yes.”

“Simplified things rather for us. Durrell and Adams’ little cabal had become a danger to both sides, really,” Louis said. “Information like this shouldn’t be in the hands of those who don’t appreciate the stakes at hand.”

 

Morse winced at that. It made it all sound so neat, so tidy.

 

When nothing about that night had been neat and tidy at all. It had been a bloodbath and the worst night of his life, the most terrible thing he had ever seen. What could those papers possibly contain that would be worth executing nine people over?

And it had been the best night of his life, too, and his heart had been beating madly even with the thrill of seeing what the hell was on the lower floor, shocked at his newfound daring.

 

And perhaps they were right; perhaps it was all relative.

It was all so confusing: Morse wasn’t sure what to think.

 

 “So,” Louis said. “I suppose that’s answered all of your questions, then?”

Morse, so lost in thought, missed the purport of these words for a moment. And then, when they caught up with him, they hit him with the force of a stone.

“It has _not!”_ Morse shouted, hotly.

Louis looked at him, nonplussed, but Singelton’s eyes darted toward him in the rearview mirror.

 

“How did he think to get away with it?  That man? What did that man think he would do with the money, if he had both sides after him? What was he planning to do with it?” Morse cried. “And who killed Rebmann? Was it the Soviets? How did they find he was working for the British government? That he really wasn’t a postgrad and a translator? Why did he underline that line in that biography of Julius Caesar? _I love treason, but hate the traitor?_ Did someone betray him? And if so, who?”

 

Louis said nothing. 

 

“And why did he underline that word, _Armada_ , on the back of the painting? Did he know he had been betrayed? Was it a message he wanted to send on, should he be killed? _Armada._ _Armada_. What’s it mean?” Morse asked. 

 

“Mr. Morse,” Singleton said, warningly.

 

But Morse continued on, undaunted. “And most importantly, what _are_ these papers that everyone seems so distraught about? Was it worth killing _nine people_ to stop their dissemination? Why are _you_ so set on obtaining them? What do all of these formulas and equations add up to that seems to have two governments in such a state?”

 

Louis ignored him, looking quickly through the papers.

“You are sure this is all of it, then? All that there was?”

 

Morse felt his heart race at the words. Were they finally getting round to this, then? Were they going to tell him about these things? About his own role in the story, about where _he_ came in to it all?

“Yes,” Morse said.

 

 “We’ve heard that you want to be a police officer,” Louis said.

 

Morse blinked at the sudden, confusing non-sequitur.

And, more to the point, how did he know? Who had told him that?

 

“Yes,” Morse said.  

“Interesting career choice,” Louis said, silkily.

“Why?” Morse snapped. “It’s not so far off from what you do, is it?”

“Well,” Louis said, “considering you produced, I’m supposing, much of this, I’m just surprised your career plans aren’t . . . shall we say . . . running in a different direction.”

 

And now they were getting close. “Why?” Morse asked. “What’s it about?”

Louis was silent for a moment, watching his face carefully. Morse felt his pulse beating wildly at his temples, in his throat.

“You don’t know?” Louis asked.

 

“No,” Morse said.

 

Louis smiled. And it was his same Tweedledum smile.  

 

“I suggest you keep it that way,” he said.

Then he handed him a folder.

“What’s this?” Morse asked.

“Your quid pro quo. For services rendered.”

 

He looked at it. On the tab, was his own name in block letters: MORSE, ENDEAVOUR. And inside, a crisp stack of paper: a certificate of honorable discharge, personnel reviews in convincingly different scripts, a false past stretching back to the day he was sent down.

 

 “You’ll be staying in Oxford, presumably?” Singleton asked.

 

Why did he ask that? Did they want him to assure them that he had no plans to emigrate to Moscow? That he would remain somewhere where they could keep an eye on him?

Morse felt like he was shaking, the adrenaline of his near escape from the factory wearing off, the proximity of those papers thrumming through him as if they had a heartbeat of their own—he was so close, he had been so close to knowing . . .

 

“It might surprise you to know, we aren’t without empathy for your situation,” Louis said.

“What?” Morse asked, his mind a hundred miles away.

“You’re being offered a second chance,” Singleton said.

“And now, here is where we leave you, Mr. Morse,” Louis said.

“But . . .”

“It’s been nice working with you.”

“But . . .”

 

Singleton slowed the van and Louis reached over the front seat to unlatch and to slide open Morse’s door.

“Hope we never do so again.”

“But . . . “

 

And then Louis all but pushed Morse out of the seat.

 

Morse stumbled sideways out onto the sidewalk, throwing his arms out to catch his balance.

 “But  . . . my car!” he shouted, as the van pulled away, accelerating down the street.

 

Bastards.

 

Morse had left his car parked along a curb a good three blocks away from the factory. And he had no idea where he was now.

He spun around in the darkness, looking for a street sign, trying to get his bearings. Finally, he saw one, glimmering under the streetlight on the corner. He ran to it, his feet thudding the pavement in rhythm with his pulse. Holton Road.

So, he was a good mile from where he had left the red convertible.

He turned and started walking slowly along the shadowed sidewalk.

 

Condescending bastards.

 

Morse felt the folder inside his jacket, right in the place where the papers had once lay. So. He had traded his real past for a false one.

A simple enough exchange, one might suppose.

 

But the key. The key he had found in the snakefish’s tank. The key remained in his pocket.

 

No, he thought. It wasn’t finished.

_I have to finish._

 

He had to know. Otherwise, his dreams would forever be haunted by nightmares of skeletal sevens. Otherwise, he’d never really be free of that small room.

 

He picked up his pace, running silently through the darkness. The world was asleep, it was silent, it was a shadow—but he was alive, he was awake, his heart beating and his lungs burning.

The world was in slumber, but he was free, and he was going to take his life back. Not at half-measures, not in any form of compromise.

 

It was true, what Bixby had said—he didn’t need someone to come looking for him.

He could do it all himself.

 

***********

 

The Canterbury Tales is actually a fair long saga. The number 24 could refer to any number of things within its pages.

 

What had made Morse light upon it as part of an address? Was Thursday right? Was he leaping to too many conclusions, making too many connections?

 

But then, what good is a hidden key if you don’t know what door it goes to? If you don’t also have a hidden address?

 

Morse put the car into park and slid out of the car. Canterbury Road was a hush of whispering trees and stately brick homes. He walked along the pristine, well-edged sidewalk until he came to number 24.

The house was dark, not even a porch light burning. Morse moved up the steps and tried the key in the door.

It fit.

 

He opened the door and slipped inside. In the light cast from the streetlamp illuminating the large front window, Morse could see at once that the house was utterly deserted. And utterly perfect. It was like a doll house; each vase carefully placed, the chairs arranged around the table with deliberate precision. There were no books lying about, no stray glasses. It was like no one actually lived there at all.

He moved silently through the house, scanning each room, looking for he knew not what. Finally, in the back of the house, he opened a final door off of the hall.

 

And his heart leapt into his throat.

 

Along the back wall, was a huge machine, like an Enigma machine, so immense as to take up a quarter of the large room. It must be the match to the one that Mr. Bright had mentioned being in that man’s house, the one he asked Morse about the first time he had come into the station.

And if that man had been colluding with the Soviets for all of those years, before he sold out to Fenix, this must be how he was communicating with them.

And if this house housed the matching machine, it must be . . .  And If this house was where Fenix was to meet for negotiations with the Soviets, it must be. . . 

 

Morse heard footsteps then, calm and deliberate, coming up behind him.

He whipped around with a gasp.

For a moment, he could not find his voice. He could do nothing but look in shock at the large man blocking the doorway, the man with a white-blonde buzz cut and decidedly off-center nose. The man who had been there, that night, a ghost in the moonlit window. The man who was now holding a gun directed squarely at his chest.

 

“It’s you!” Morse managed to gasp at last. “It’s you!”   

The man looked at him solemnly. “We didn’t know about you,” he said, in a soft and somber Russian accent.  

“I know,” Morse said.

“I was sorry, ven I heard. I never really trusted Clive Durrell, but . . . “  

The man shrugged then, looking half-repulsed, half regretful. For one wild moment, Morse thought he might be granted a reprieve.

 

 “That’s why I wish you had pretended not to know me,” he said.  

 

And in that moment, Morse understood.

 

 _"I love treason but hate the traitor_ ,” was the quote Erik Rebmann had underlined.

And it was no wonder that Richmond had chosen him and passed Morse over.

 

Because Morse felt just the opposite.

 

He hated this whole pointless game, the game played between east and west, the game that never could, really, ever have a winner.

But he couldn’t bring himself to hate the man who stood before him, holding the gun aimed at him with a face full of regret, a face full of sorrow.

Who knew how many people this man had killed, all in the name of a cause?

But this man had saved him, too.

 

And many might be damned so that one might be saved.

 

The man raised the gun so that he was aiming it as his head, and Morse came to understand that it was nothing personal. It was the game. The man had no wish for Morse to suffer. He would make the end as clean and quick as he could.

Morse closed his eyes. His heart was beating wildly. And in the end, it was the numbers that claimed him. He couldn’t help but count the beats of his heart, wondering what number he would get to until all would be erased.

_One, two, three, four, five, s . . ._

He heard a high-pitched sound, like a burst of air, and then a heavy weight collapse to the ground.

 

Somehow, Morse kept counting.

 

******************

 

“Mr. Morse,” called a commanding voice.

_Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen . . ._

 “Mr. Morse!”

Morse opened his eyes.

 

It was Miss Bagshot, still dressed in her prim green jumper and tweed skirt, holding a rather alarming looking gun with a long tube at the end. The Russian man lay, blood pooling from his head, dead at her feet.

She raised the gun and trained it on him, shaking her head sadly, as if he had been a tremendous disappointment, as if she had suspected all along that he might be.

He wondered if she might kill him, too. It seemed as if she was wondering that, as well. As if she was deliberating what to do with him.

Morse took a deep breath and prepared to begin anew the task of counting the beats of his thundering heart, when Miss Bagshot suddenly seemed to startle, looking into the darkened left corner of the room, and Morse went cold with a new glimmer of fear.

Miss Bagshot did not seem the sort of woman who was easy to take by surprise. Morse felt himself freeze, afraid to follow her gaze.

 

Just then, a man dressed in a navy blue security uniform stepped out of the shadows, his dark hair slicked back, holding a gun of his own.  Morse recognized him at once. He was the guard from the Fenix factory, the one who had called after the man in the white lab coat, creating the distraction that had enabled his escape.

Morse took a sharp breath.

Because . . . he was also the man who had been at the fair, the dark-haired man standing at the carousel.

“Good evening, Mathilda, my dear,” he said lightly, taking a step forward.

Miss Bagshot’s alarmed expression turned to one of bored familiarity. She snorted a laugh. “Jack Blyton,” she said.

 

The man flashed a smile and pushed his hair back with his free hand, and, as he disheveled it, it went from slicked back to smooth and feathered.  

 

Morse’s eyes went wide.  

 

Because he was also . . .

 

 _“Bixby?_ ” Morse asked.

 

The smile deepened and Bixby winked. “I told you I could be anything you wanted me to be, didn’t I? And here you thought I was blowing smoke.”

 

Morse stood, dumbfounded. He was aware, suddenly, that he must look like an idiot, his eyes blown wide, his mouth hanging open, and suddenly, he snapped it shut.

But it was impossible, it was surreal— because there was something decidedly off about Bixby, something beside the inelegant security guard uniform. In the blink of an eye, his accent had gone from rich and plummy to warm and lazy, the vowels drawn out oddly around the edges.

“ _Bixby_ ,” Miss Bagshot said with contempt. “Leave it to an American to choose such a garish, gaudy cover.”

“He believed it,” Bixby said, defensively, with a jerk of his head toward Morse. “It’s hardly any worse than yours, my dear. You look about as much like a sweet little old lady language teacher as Al Capone.”

 

That confirmed it. The man must be utterly mad. For how could he say such a thing? The woman was standing right there, holding a gun she had just fired into a man’s head, looking as if she’d have no compunction whatsoever about using it again.

But to Morse’s surprise, Miss Bagshot simply chuckled, as if he had flattered her somehow.

 

Bixby looked to him and tipped an imaginary hat.

“Jack Blyton,” he said. “CIA”

 _“CIA?_ ” Morse asked, incredulously. He had never heard of anything more ridiculous, nor had he ever heard such an obviously false name.

 It was clearly all yet another lie.

 They were all of them mad. Singleton and Louis were Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and Miss Bagshot an imperious Queen of Hearts, and Bixby a silky and elusive Cheshire Cat.

“Central Intelligence Agency,” Bixby supplied, helpfully.

“ _I know what it stands for_ ,” Morse said, hotly. “But you’re . . . . you’re Bixby. Tony and everyone . . . they all acted as if they’ve known you for ages.”  

“Fair enough, old man,” Bixby said, his posh accent returning. “I’m Joss Bixby.”

 

He walked a few steps forward, considering the man on the ground, looking at his now distorted face.  Morse felt the bile rise to the back of his throat, as he followed Bixby’s gaze. He had to look away from the awful sight.

“The better question,” Bixby said crisply. “Is who is this?”

“Pavel Mikhailovich Zorkin. KGB,” Miss Bagshot supplied.

 “Ah,” Bixby said. “Yes. I hardly recognized him. He’s put on so much weight since that whole debacle in Prague. And being shot certainly hasn’t helped his looks any.”

 

Morse felt as if he had been slapped. How could the man be so flip? A man was dead. Had just been _shot in the head._ The man was a killer, yes, but was it that simple? After all, for a brief moment, at least, the man had showed him more empathy than Singleton and Louis, with all of their confusing doubletalk, had ever shown him.

 

“You just killed him,” Morse breathed, his voice sounding unnaturally high to himself. “You just . . . you just _killed_ him!”

 

Miss Bagshot raised her eyebrows. "Yes. Yes, Mr. Morse. I certainly did.”

“But . . .”  Morse began, but Bixby cut across him.

“Mr. Morse has rather a romantic temperament I’m afraid. Understandable. We all begin as idealists, don’t we?”

 

Bixby considered him for a moment, his dark eyes surprisingly soft in the dim light.

 

“You’re thinking that he saved you, once,” Bixby said.

Miss Bagshot snorted, as if she thought the idea absurd, but Bixby’s eyes didn’t waver.

 

“Yes,” Morse said.

 

Bixby nodded, a little sadly. “And tonight, he would have killed you. All a part of the game. He lost fair and square, old man. This man has killed more people than you and I can count.”

“He seemed . . .  sorry,” Morse said, and the words sounded frail, even to himself, but they were also, somehow, true. 

 

Miss Bagshot huffed again at that, but Bixby nodded.  

“Perhaps a part of him was,” Bixby said, “But that would not have slowed his finger on the trigger, I’m afraid. I’d say Miss Bagshot got here just in time.” 

Then, Bixby turned to her. The gun in her hand was still trained on Morse.

 

“And that I did, too,” he added, pointedly.

 

She lowered the gun. “I wasn’t going to _kill_ him,” she said coldly. “Just put a little sense into him.”

She glared at Morse, then, her face stern. “You have wandered into no man’s land, Mr. Morse. None of this is any longer your concern.”  

“It _is_ my concern. You’ve just killed a man. I have a duty to report this,” Morse said.

“To whom?” she asked. “To Inspector Thursday?”

 

Her pointed use of Inspector Thursday’s name gave Morse pause, but he was sure, he was certain, that Thursday would want to know about this.

  
“Yes.” Morse said. “Yes. It’s a police matter, surely. I have a duty to inform them.”

“ _Duty_ ," Miss Bagshot replied, scathingly. "Yes. We all have a duty. It was _your_ duty to mind your Ps and Qs and report to Special Branch.”

“I did. I did report to them.”  

“Then why, might I ask, are you here? Your part in this is done, Mr. Morse. Be grateful. It’s finished,” she said. “It’s over.”

 

“It’s _not_ finished!” Morse cried. “It’s _not_ over! I want to know what it was about! It was five years. Five years. And I didn’t even ask? Why didn’t I ask? And now I’m just supposed to what? . . . show everyone a past I don’t remember and pretend it all never happened?”

 

“Yes,” Miss Bagshot hissed.

But Bixby looked less certain. “We’ve trusted him this far. Seems only fair, Mathilda.”  

 

 Miss Bagshot sighed, then, shifting her weight as if deliberating something. Then, she said fiercely, “If we tell you some, will you leave it all alone?”

 

“I think I already have some of it,” Morse said. “Dur  . . . That man was working on something for the Soviets. But instead of handing it over, he sold it to Fenix instead. So, this man, Zorkin, killed him. And Adams and those students.”

“Yes,” Bixby said.

“Erik Rebmann suspected that Fenix was trading in state secrets. He’d passed himself off a translator. For Fenix. To try to prove what was happening in Laboratory 4. And . . . and he found out something else, too didn’t he?”

 

Morse looked to Bixby, then. “You,” he said. “I saw you before. Before you were Bixby. You were there, at the fair. You were waiting for him. For Rebmann. You were to meet him at the carousel. He was going to tell you something.”  

 

Bixby looked impressed. “You’ve quite the eye, old man,” he murmured. “Most people tend not to notice what’s right in front of their faces.”

 

“He was going to tell you something. Erik Rebmann. What was he going to tell you?” Morse asked. 

“He had information on a Soviet cell, one that we’ve long suspected has been operating in Oxford. But Zorkin got to him first, I’m afraid,” Bixby said, his voice slow and meditative.  

“But how did Zorkin know? How did Zorkin know Rebmann was planning to meet with you?”

“We aren’t sure. He left a cryptic message,” Bixby explained. “We believe he was betrayed.”

 

 _“'Ich liebe den Verrat, aber ich hasse den Verräter_.' I love treason, but I hate the traitor,” Morse said.

 

Miss Baghot frowned. “How do you know this?”

 

“I saw the book. In Inspector Thursday’s office. While I was waiting to look at lineups.”

“And, of course, you read it,” Bixby said, a bemused smile twitching at the corners of his lips.

“He was betrayed then,” Morse said. “By whom?”

 

Bixby and Miss Bagshot exchanged glances.

“We don’t know, old man,” Bixby said, finally.

 

“It was Richmond.” Morse said. As soon as he said it, he knew it was true.

 _“Richmond_?” Miss Bagshot said, incredulously. “Of course not. It was Richmond who _recruited_ Rebmann, when Rebmann was a student at Oxford. To work for the Foreign Office,” she said.  “He had his eye on you for a while.” She scowled then. “Alex Richmond has been working for us since the forties. What would make you say such a thing?”

“He pretended not to know me,” Morse said.

Miss Bagshot shrugged. “That’s easy enough to explain. He was instructed to keep you out of it.”

 

But Morse shook his head, feeling a shiver of a chill at the memory, of how Richmond’s face had changed as he stepped closer toward him, as his face was illuminated by the light of the hall.

 

“No,” Morse said, in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “No. It’s more than that. He has the face of a fanatic.”

For a moment, the both of them were silent.

Then, Miss Bagshot laughed. “ _The face of a fanatic_? My, how fanciful. What next, are you going to lead us all on a study of Victorian phrenology?”

 

But Bixby didn’t laugh.

 

And so it was to Bixby whom he turned, it was Bixby to whom he made his silent appeal.

Because the words were disappearing now. How could he tell them? How could he tell them, convince them, that, if he knew nothing else in this world, he knew that, what it was to look into the face of an utter fanatic, into the face of one who cared about nothing else save his precious cause? That such a face was, after all, the only human face he had seen for five years?

And it was more than that, too.

“He seemed . . . frightened of me. Richmond,” Morse said.  

Now, it was Miss Bagshot who was looking grim, and Bixby who broke into a rueful smile.

“Perhaps he had cause to be,” Bixby said, laughing.

Miss Bagshot shot him a look.

 

Morse seized on this. “Why? Is it because of those papers?”

 

There was a long and pointed silence

 

“No,” Miss Bagshot said. “No. That’s quite enough.”

But Morse was off, he was going—he would not be stopped again from getting the answers.

“ _Armada_. That’s the key. That’s the message that Rebmann was trying to pass on. He had underlined the word _Armada_ on the back of the painting. To let you all know in case he didn’t get to tell you.”

“Saw that, too, did you?” Bixby asked.

“Yes.”

 

There was another silence.

“Mr. Morse,” Miss Bagshot said. “I don’t know what you want. . . .”

“ . . . I want to know what was in those papers, and . . . “ Morse began, but Miss Bagshot cut across him.

“Mr. Morse. You were working for a Soviet Operative for five years. The man went rogue. He was a danger to both sides of the equation. A danger to all humanity, really. And you played a part in that. The man was shot, his cabal eliminated.  I hasten to remind you: You didn’t seem to question at the time what the hell it was you were doing.”

 

It was like a punch to the gut. Because it was true. Who was he to get on his high horse now?

 

“You’ve been given a second chance, Mr. Morse. How often do you need to be told that before you get some sense and _take it?_ ”

“But what exactly do all of those papers entail? They’re just papers. And what about Armada? What does it mean?”

 

“She’s right. It’s enough,” Bixby said.

 

Morse looked at him blankly; it had been he who had seemed the more willing to allow him some chance at getting at the truth.

And now that door had been shut, too.

 

“Come on,” Bixby said, holding out a hand.

Morse stood stock still for a moment, looking for the words to convince him. And the words were disappearing, his voice was disappearing.

“Come on. It’s enough.”

“It’s not enough,” Morse whispered. 

“Yes. I’m afraid that it is, old man,” Bixby said. He held his hand out, as one might do to one who was tottering on the edge of a building, preparing to jump.

 

And perhaps, considering Miss Bagshot was still holding her gun, his situation was not so very different, after all, from one on the brink of suicide. 

 

“Come on. I’ll take you back,” he said coaxingly.

 

Morse looked at Miss Baghshot’s determined face. “But . . .  but what about _him_?" he said, uncertainly, with a nod to the man who lay dead on the floor.

“What about him?” Miss Bagshot asked.

“Shouldn’t we . . . but don’t we need to report this?”

Miss Bagshot sighed, and even Bixby, he noticed, didn’t seem able to refrain from rolling his eyes.  

“Report it, then," she said. "By all means. But know this. By the time the police get here, they won’t find him. They won’t find me. They won’t even find that communications device. It will all have been seized and cleared away. And besides, Mr. Morse. You already have a bit of a credibility problem as it is, don’t you? Do you honestly think any one will believe that a retired civil servant who takes in language students goes about shooting Russian thugs?” She laughed again, low and dangerous, and Morse was given to understand just how powerless, how utterly dismissible he really was.

 

“Come on, then,” Bixby said again, waving him toward him with his outstretched hand.

Morse hesitated, but, in the end, he relented, walking slowly over towards the doorway in which Bixby now stood. It seemed better to go with him than to remain with Miss Bagshot, who was clearly at her boiling point, who had plainly lost all patience with him.

 

This Bixby or this Blyton was clearly a liar, but there was something about him, paradoxically enough, that was also sincere. He wasn’t sure what his real name was, let alone his real nationality, but he seemed the safer option.

So Morse said nothing more, but silently walked over to him, and then followed him out the door.

 

 

When they got to where a blue Jag was parked behind his red one, he asked, “Which car are we taking?”

“The red convertible,” Bixby said. “The blue one isn’t mine, strictly speaking.”

Morse snorted and tossed him the keys. “And the red wasn’t yours either, I take it.”

“Did I say that?” Bixby asked, with a sphinx-like smile.  

But Morse just shook his head. He knew that about every third thing the man said was false. Still, if Morse was to be escorted away from a Soviet safe house, Bixby had seemed the safer option as opposed to taking his chances with Miss Bagshot.

 

Morse was forced to reevaluate his earlier hypothesis, however, when Bixby took a sudden, unexpected turn, cutting off of the main road and heading back into the trees.

“Where are we going?” Morse asked at once.

Bixby said nothing; he glanced back in the rearview mirror, as if to check to see if they were being followed.

"This isn’t the way to Headington,” Morse said.

“No,” Bixby agreed.

“So where are we going?” Morse asked

“I think we have a few more questions to get cleared up, don’t you?” Bixby asked.

 

Morse felt a surge of hope, then, and turned in his seat. “Are you going to tell me, then? You’re going to tell me about those papers?”

 

“No,” Bixby said. _“You’re_ going to tell _me_.”

“But I don’t know. I don't know what they are.”

“I think you’ll find that you do. Unless I’m wrong. But I’m seldom that,” Bixby said. Then, he looked at him and winked.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Morse snapped. 

Bixby shrugged again. “I suppose we’ll find out.”

 

Morse scowled. He was sick of being toyed with. He had half a mind to jump out of the damn car.

 

“Besides, I think we both know that you will never let this drop until you've learned the full story,” Bixby said. “Mathilda might call it recklessness, but I’d call it prudence.”

 

And what did that mean?

What an annoyingly enigmatic man.

 

But for some reason, he wasn’t afraid of Bixby. And then, he understood why. His expression was just the opposite of that man’s. Of Richmond’s. He might have scoffed at Morse’s horror over the death of Pavel Zorkin, but he had understood it.

He might be playing the game, but he hadn’t yet reached the point to where he put the cause above human lives.

He had no reason to think Bixby would do him harm. He had, after all, spent a night passed out on the man’s bathroom floor. Or . . . somebody’s bathroom floor, at any rate. He was quickly beginning to doubt whether that house was ever Bixby's.

 

Still, it was humiliating, being whisked away, as if he was still a person with no autonomy.

 

Morse crossed his arms and looked at him, impassively. “Thought I’d be all right with a secret agent.”

“Well,” Bixby said, his full mouth twitching into a smile. “There are secret agents, and there are secret agents.”

“And what sort of secret agent are you?”

“I’m the sort who sees civilians safely home,” Bixby said.

“But this _isn’t_ the way to Headington,” Morse said. “This is the way to Lake Silence.”

“Yes. I didn’t say your home. I meant mine.”

 

Morse wasn’t sure how he felt about that, either, about being alone in that palatial fortress with this man of a thousand identities.

 

Then, Bixby hit the gas, and veered off to the right. The wind was blowing in Morse’s hair, and he threw his hand out to catch himself on the dashboard, taken off guard by the sudden change in direction.

“But this isn’t the way to your house,” Morse said.  “This is the way to Tony’s.”

“I’ve recently had a little change of address,” Bixby shrugged.

And then, he punched the gas again, and they were off and flying wildly through the trees, off into the darkness of a dense and silent wood.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Off to drama with Bix, and then it is back to the Thursdays' . . . at last! 
> 
> I didn't get as much time at the Thursdays' as I thought I would, since the plot took Morse off on his own mission for so long, so I actually am planning a sequel to this, in which Morse is a PC (boarding with the Thursdays) who is called in to help Thursday and the CID with a deranged murderer/art thief. 
> 
> There will be lots of angst and h/c and domestic fluff, but It won't be *too* shippy . . . although there will be dashes of Fancy/Trewlove and Morse/Tony and Morse/Bixby.  
> (I thought for sure he'd end up with Bixby--but Tony has really surprised me. I think he's got the better odds right now :D )


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to provide my justification over here in this universe for making Bixby American. He is, after all, the Great Gatsby! So, I've sort of taken the show's AU and made it a bit more in line with canon. :D (that's my story, anyway!) 
> 
> In this chapter, I *finally* return Morse to the Thursdays!

As soon as the car veered off the main road and turned further into the trees, kicking up a tumult of gravel as it went, Morse knew where they might be going.

 

But no. It couldn’t be so. Certainly, the man couldn’t possibly be so brazen.

 

But, sure enough, in a moment they were pulling up in front of the lake house, a small, weathered-gray wood cabin half-hidden in rustling summer leaves, its familiar, rickety steps spilling out a mere few feet from the edge of the black mirror of the lake.

 

“This isn’t your house,” Morse protested. “This is the lake house on Tony’s property.”

“I’m just borrowing it for a bit. I’m sure the Donns wouldn’t mind. They’ve always been so neighborly.”

Morse snorted at that. “You aren’t their neighbor.”

“Aren’t I?” Bixby asked.

“No,” Morse said.

“Come now, Morse,” Bixby said, swinging himself out of the driver’s seat with all of his typical casual grace, “Aren’t we all neighbors, in a sense?” 

 

Morse gave up. The man had an answer for everything.

 

“So. Why are we here?” Morse asked.

Bixby folded his arms, standing at his ease, surveying the place as if he found all to be quite satisfactory.

“Nice quiet place in which to work, I would have thought,” he said.

 

Morse went still at that; the words filled him with a cold wash of trepidation.  

 

What had he done? Why had he allowed himself to be brought to this isolated place?

 

There was a time when they all used to come out here—he and Tony and Pippa and Bruce, and all of their set—when they were students, but the place had a deserted aura about it now.

Tony’s parents had never used it, had let it settle into a state of genteel dilapidation. And now that Tony was the earl, now that he was . . . older. . . he most likely never used it, either. Now it would be Tony who would be busy with other matters, as his father was before him.

Tony no longer had time to sit idly on the railings of the porch or to go along, half-walking, half-wading, around the circumference of the lake.  

 

No one might ever come out here. It might be ages before he was found. His life would be just as it was; he’d simply be working for this man, not that man.

Morse covered his right hand with his left, holding it to hide the slight tremor there.

 

Bixby, in the meanwhile, had headed halfway up the rough and overgrown path to the front door. He stopped and turned when he realized that Morse was not following.

 

“Come on, then,” he prompted.

 

But Morse remained where he was, sitting in the passenger seat of the red Jaguar.

 

Bixby stood—his arms still folded, still wearing his bemused and knowing smile—and regarded him for a moment.

 

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you go ahead inside? I think I’d really rather wait out of doors, if it’s all the same to you,” he said.

He tipped his head back, then, so that his face was cast up toward the night sky.

“It’s amazing how many stars you can see out in the country, isn’t it?” he murmured. “It makes sense, when you get out and away from all the city lights, why they call it the Milky Way.”

Bixby’s rapt expression was contagious, and Morse found that he couldn’t help but to let his guard down long enough to look up, too, into the vast blackness scattered with the broken diamonds of constellations, ones he had nearly forgotten, but which were as poignantly familiar as old friends.

 

Then, a decisive crack snapped the silence, and Morse startled. Bixby had wandered off into a stand of trees and was collecting branches, breaking them into manageable pieces, as if to build a fire.

 

Morse watched him for a minute or so before calling after him. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “What is it you want from me?”

 

Bixby straightened, looking surprised. “Why, it was you who said it wasn’t finished, old man.”

“Yes,” Morse conceded.

“Well. I thought you might like the chance to. You obviously aren’t the sort of person who can leave a task mid-way through.”

 

Morse said nothing. What did the man mean, exactly? Inspector Thursday had always said it was best to simply forget about all of those equations, to let them recede in the rearview mirror.

 

“Simple as that? Morse said.

“Well,” Bixby said silkily. “Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Even me.”

 

 Still, Morse remained where he was.  

“Go on,” Bixby said, with a nod to the door. “You know you’ll be better off if you do. There’s a rather nice desk in there, all that you need. Leave the door open if you like.”

 

Morse snorted at that. He knew all too well there was a desk in the place, having once sat at it himself.

 

Bixby turned away then, meandering further down to the edge of the lake, searching for more branches. Morse slowly got out of the car, watching him for any sudden movements. But the man paid absolutely no attention to him whatsoever.

Morse sized the man up. Bixby seemed as if he might be light enough on his feet, but Morse felt sure he could outrun him should the need arise. There was nothing from stopping him from making a break for it, right now, nothing to stop him from running off through the dark trees. He knew his way through these dense woods better than Bixby, certainly. He could go out to the main road, perhaps try to get a ride back to the Thursdays’.

But although he might outrun Joss Bixby or Jack Bryton—or whatever the hell the man’s name was—what the man had said was true.

He’d never outrun the numbers.

They would follow him with that same sense of urgency, the same sense of incompletion, to the end of his days.

 

If he _did_ finish, though, what then? If he finished, if he had the chance to see exactly what is was that had been floating across his thoughts like dark clouds across clear skies, crackling through his synapses like static, perhaps then he  _could_  walk away, perhaps he  _could_  let it all recede in the rearview mirror.

 

It couldn’t hurt to try.

 

Morse started up the walk with a terrible sense of déjà vu. He felt almost dizzy to think that he had once sat on the same stoop with Tony, watching the movement of the wind in the leaves reflected on the summer lake, not knowing, never imagining, that one night he would be here again, but as an altogether different person, not at all who he once was.

Morse swallowed, steeling himself against the thought, and turned the knob of the door.

 

Inside the cottage, a small desk stood under the window. Morse pulled the chain of the desk lamp, throwing a circle of butter yellow light onto the dark wood. He took a deep breath and blew across the surface of the desk, sending a cloud of dust up into the air, tiny glittering motes that drifted in and out of the lamp shine.

He opened a drawer and found a stack of writing paper.  In a smaller drawer, he found pencils and pens, left behind from some previous occupant—most likely Tony. 

 

 _I_   _didn’t_   _finish_.

Morse lowered himself into the simple wooden chair and closed his eyes, and immediately, he heard it: a buzzing, a humming, a cracking—like the sound of electrical wires in a rainstorm.

 

He took the pencil in his left hand. And he started writing.

 

And the crackling sound in his head was subsumed by the scratch of lead on paper. Equations and rough diagrams poured from his pencil like water from a rainspout in a burbling cascade.

 

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed—he had lost the art of gauging its passage over the years somehow, in a world without clocks or calendars, without moon or sun, without summer and winter.

 

As he worked, he could see, now, how he had been given things piecemeal, out of order. Now that he was alone, now that he was free, he could fit together all of the pieces without fear. There was no one to come in and glower, there was no twist to his arm that sent that jolt of pain through his shoulder. 

He set all of the hitherto missing pieces into piles and then, after he completed the last diagram, he sat back, stunned at all he had accomplished.

 

He was finished. It was finished. And he could breathe.

 

It was as if an iron chain had been wrapped around him, one he had worn for so long that he had ceased to notice it. And now it was gone, now it had disappeared like smoke, and he could breathe. The oxygen circulated through his brain in a rush, adrenaline coursing through his veins. 

 

He stood up and looked over it all, one palm resting firm against the lamp-warmed wood of the desk. He scanned the papers, considering them in light of what he had completed before, working to understand how these final pieces fit in.

 

And the iron bands returned: all the oxygen went out of his lungs, out of the room. The world went dark before him, so that it was spinning.

 

It was a horror. All of it, a horror.

 

There were algorithms that predicted the spread of contagious diseases, and studies of chemical compounds that bonded into lethal gases  ... but the largest set of papers completed the plans and design of a missile delivery system, one so accurate as to pinpoint a square block of a city from 5000 miles away.

All the tools, in short, necessary to make a war in the nuclear age utterly winnable.

“I have become death, the shatterer of worlds,” he murmured.

He was a shadow and he was silent. He was death.

He had been death, quietly working toward the shattering of the world, one that would leave the planet a wasteland, drifting cold and silent with the expansion of the universe, a bottle with no message bobbing pointlessly on the waves.

 

So, this is why Bixby had brought him here.

He had brought him here for just this.

Morse picked up the papers and walked out, his steps quick and brusque as he crossed the worn planks of the floor.

 

Outside, Bixby was there, sitting on the ground, leaning against a fallen tree. A fire cracked in the stone ring before him, and, as he looked up, his dark eyes reflected its light, so that two smaller lights seemed to flicker in their depths.

 

Morse headed over, holding the papers tight to his chest.

“Why should I hand this over to the Americans?” Morse snapped.

Bixby blinked at that, surprised.

“Who said you were?” he asked.

“That’s why you brought me here isn’t it?”

Bixby shrugged. “Is it?”

“Why do you so often answer a question with a question?” Morse asked.

“Why do you so often jump to conclusions?” he replied. “I thought you wanted to be a police officer. Shouldn’t you wait until you’ve acquired all the evidence first?”

 

Morse huffed impatiently. The man had just done it again.

 

“Do you know what all of this is?” Morse asked, taking another tack.

There must be _some_ way of getting a straight answer out of the man.

 

Bixby considered him, his smile fading, his dark eyes solemn. “Yes.”

“How?”

He shrugged one shoulder, as if the answer were all too simple. “What else could it be?”

“So,” Morse said. “You figured it all out. Aren’t you clever. And you tricked me into coming out here. And now you’ve gotten what you wanted. As one might suppose you always do.”

“ _I_  don’t want the things,” Bixby said, appalled.

“Then what do you propose I do with them, then?”  
 

 

“Well,” Bixby said. “I was rather thinking . . .” He let his voice drift off at the end of the sentence and flicked a glance toward the fire.

 

“You expect me to believe you brought me all the way out here just so you could burn it all?” Morse asked.

“No,” Bixby said. “I was rather thinking you would. It’s your work, after all, old man, not mine.”

 

Morse stared at him in wonderment, his thumbs unconsciously running over the rough edges of the papers.

 

“Well?” Bixby asked. “What’s it to be? Do you want all that or not?”

“No,” Morse said.

“Well. Why not go ahead then? You can’t tell me you want anyone else getting ahold of that, do you?”

“No.”

“Well, then?”

 

Slowly, Morse walked over to the edge of the fire. Five years. And what was the point of it all? 

He held the stack papers over the flames and unceremoniously dropped them in.  

Immediately, the fire crackled from low and orange to incandescent yellow, as sparks and embers flew up into the air. The white papers curled, twisting into large, black bits of ash, floating up like dark snowflakes ringed at the edges with a thin sizzle of red.

 

Bixby raised his eyebrows.

“What?” Morse asked, shortly.

 

 "Nothing,” Bixby said. “I just thought you might toss them in one at a time. Sort of draw out the cathartic moment, as it were.” 

 

He moved over then to the edge of the log, allowing for a place for Morse to also sit and lean against it. Morse hesitated for a moment and then sauntered over, folding himself down onto the ground beside him, pulling up his knees and crossing his arms over them, so that he was leaning slightly forward, so that he could feel the warmth of the fire on his face.

 

“Won’t you get into trouble?” Morse ventured at last. “This wasn’t part of your orders, was it? You were supposed to secure anything that you found.”

Bixby huffed a gentle laugh. ‘Well. _I’m_ certainly not planning on telling anyone about this. Are you?”

“No,” Morse said softly.

“No,” Bixby agreed. “No, I didn’t think so.”

“But can you do that?” Morse asked. “Is that allowed? I mean . . . you claimed to be working for the American government.” The polished accent dropped for a moment, changing into a drawl. “I am American, yes,” he said. “Much as you seem to doubt it.”

He smiled bemusedly, and, with the change of expression, the plummy accent was back into place. “But first, I like to consider myself a citizen of the world, old man.”

“Hmmmmm,” Morse said. “But what about Singleton and Louis? They seemed set on making sure all was recovered. Won’t they come looking for me, if they think . . . if they find out I . . .”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry overmuch about our friends Singleton and Louis.”

“Why shouldn’t I? They asked me if I was planning to remain in Oxford. Won’t they be watching me, forever dogging my steps, suspicious of just that?”

 

Bixby reached inside his jacket, and pulled out a small device, about the size of his hand. As he pushed a button, two small reels began to slowly revolve—it was, Morse realized, a sort of small tape recorder.

 

“The chicken pie is off,” said a voice.

“I’d call that a very bad show.”

 

Bixby shook his head sadly, clucking his tongue in the manner one does when one finds something a shame.

“Sending an untrained civilian out on a recognizance mission? Sitting back and allowing a failed Greats student to do their dirty work? I wonder how that will go over with their superiors in London?”

 

Morse stared at him in disbelief.

“How did you get that recording?” he asked.

 

Bixby smiled.

And then he winked.

 

“You . . . you were . . . you were that waiter.”

Bixby’s laugh was all the deeper for the silence around them, seeming to ring through the trees.

He was even more taken with himself than usual.

Which was saying quite a lot.

 

“But how?” Morse gasped. Morse had  _thought_  there was something odd about that server, whose eyes had looked so uncannily young.

“Polyurethane,” Bixby explained.

“What?”

“A mask, old man.”

 

Morse studied his face, considering.

 

“Do you ever drop your mask?” Morse asked. “Who are you really?”

“I told you, but you didn’t believe me. You seemed to prefer Bixby. You see, even you aren’t immune. We all prefer the masks that are the easiest for us to understand, the conventions with which we’re most familiar.”

Morse snorted at that. “Jack Bryton. Sounds like a stage name.”

“Does it? Well, it’s not, perhaps, the name I was born with. The United States is, as they say, a nation of immigrants. I might have found it prudent to change my name at one point, for professional reasons.”

 

“Hmmmmmm,” Morse hummed, with a note of skepticism.

Bixby had both answered and failed to answer his question. Because it wasn’t only a name that he was after, when he asked the strange man beside him who he really was.

After all, Morse never used his own name, himself.

It’s not a name that sums up who we truly are. A rose by any other name and all the rest.

It was perhaps best to go about finding the answer Morse sought with a more specific question.

Bixby didn’t strike him as the philosophical sort.

 

“Would you have shot that man? Pavel Zorkin?” Morse asked.

“Yes,” Bixby said. 

 

Morse considered him for a moment and then shook his head. He didn’t quite believe it.

“Why didn’t you, then?” he asked.

“Mathilda had the better angle.”

“That’s all?”

 “You don’t believe me?” Bixby asked. “You certainly are a difficult person to please. Would you rather I had let Pavel kill you?”

“No. It’s just that . . . . I don’t know. You don’t have to speak of him so dismissively, that’s all.”

“How is that  _dismissive_?” Bixby asked incredulously. “It was his name, wasn’t it?”

“Even so. You needn’t use it so casually, so cavalierly, as if you were old friends,” Morse said.  

“Why shouldn’t I? We were once. We worked together for years.”

 

Morse stilled at that.

“ _What_?”

 

“Pavel,” Bixby said. “He used to work for the British Foreign Office. We were on assignment together in Prague, when he got word that his grandfather had died. His grandfather was a big believer in the Revolution, in the Party. Pavel said that he thought he needed to go in. To fight for country, right or wrong. In deference to his grandfather’s memory.  I understood. My grandfather has been a big influence in my life as well . . . So. We parted ways. Decent of him to have told me. He could have simply shot me and had done with it.”

 

Bixby looked at him steadily. Morse felt the urge to look away but, instead, he forced himself to hold his gaze.

 

“Would I have been sorry, to have had to do it? Of course. But he wasn’t exactly offering me a choice, was he? Unlike you, he wasn’t some civilian fallen in over his head. He knew the rules. He lost fair and square, old man.”

 

Morse tuned away and looked into the fire. It was an honest answer, finally, but Morse couldn’t say he relished hearing it.

 

Bixby seemed to sense his disapproval. “You. You said you wanted to be a police officer. This morning, after the party.”

“Yes,” Morse said.

“You’ll have to face the same conundrum some day or another. What? Do you think you’ll be spending your days getting cats out of trees for little old ladies? You think you’ll simply walk into a bank robbery and say, ‘Constable Morse! Hands up!’ and the thieves will say, ‘Oh, sorry, officer,’ and put down their guns?”

 

Morse turned away. He hadn’t thought of that, really. He had only ever thought of how he had felt when he had met Inspector Thursday, of how Thursday had seemed such a paradox, so different from what he knew: a big man with a low and gentle voice, with hardened hands that threatened no violence. How, for the first time in his remembrance, Morse found himself daring to hope that things might be all right. 

 

“I don’t know,” Morse admitted. “I suppose when I thought of it, I thought of Inspector Thursday. How he was there and . . . when he was there, I just knew everything would be ... I just felt safe, that’s all. To be that for other people, well.... I simply can’t think of anything else I would rather do, anything more important.”

“Thursday can tell you some tales, I’m sure,” Bixby said. “Perhaps you ought to talk to him and get the full picture.”

 

Morse huffed a rueful laugh. “I very much doubt that Inspector Thursday has ever  _killed_  a man.”

“Well, we’ll have to disagree there. I very much doubt that he hasn’t.”

 

Well. The man didn’t know what he was talking about. Thursday, who rumbled down the stairs as they sat at breakfast, glancing into the dining room to make sure all was well? Thursday standing sentinel in the hallway at the hat stand?  It just wasn’t possible that the same man who spoke so low and deep and quietly at the hospital, the man who stopped at Woolworth’s on his way home from work to buy his daughter a record, could have ever _killed_ a man.

With his calm dark eyes and slow, deliberate movements, Thursday was nothing like that man, who had been nothing if not unpredictable and violent and unfathomable.

Thursday made his intentions clear, but who could tell _what_ it was that that man wanted, what he expected?

 

“What was he planning. That man?” Morse asked. “Do you know? If he began all these projects at the behest of the Soviets, what made him change his mind? What made him begin selling documents to Fenix?” 

“Yes,” Bixby said, “We have some idea. That’s what put him back on the radar, actually. Real estate negotiations of all things. He was trying to buy an island.”

“Buy an  _island_?” Morse asked.

It’s not as preposterous as it sounds. Quite a few wealthy people own private islands. Marlon Brando is putting in an offer on one in the South Pacific this month.”

“Who’s Marlon Brando?” Morse asked.

Bixby rolled his eyed and shook his head. “He’s quite a well-known actor. To most people. People who go to the movies. But that wasn’t the pertinent part of that sentence.”

Morse looked at him in confusion.

Oh.

The South Pacific.

One of the few places where one might hope to survive an all-out thermonuclear war.

Bixby must have seen it, the moment realization dawned, for then he nodded.

“He and his followers stopped working for the Soviets, and started working only for themselves. They seemed keen to set up their own society. To set up their own world. They didn’t care how this one ended. They didn’t care who got ahold of those papers. Let the ignorant masses kill one another. The chosen ones would remain.”

“And Adams. The other don. He was a part of it, too?” Morse asked. “I never knew him, when I was at Lonsdale.”

“He was working with someone else, prior to falling in with Durrell. Kept a far lower profile. Even the man’s own wife knew nothing about it, it seems. He told her he was working on a book on the sciences as they were portrayed in seventeenth-century literature, as an excuse for going out so often. Told her that he needed to go to the college, to confer with a colleague. Even had a fake little manuscript. A few pages long, the rest of the papers blank.”

“And what about Armada?”

“I don’t know, old man.”

“It’s an acronym, surely? All of those As. Association of, for example?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. If we can’t decipher what Rebmann meant,” Bixby sighed, “that secret might just die with him.”

 

Morse turned away, then, towards the fire, watching it as it snapped and popped. His shoulder was just brushing Bixby’s; he was close enough to smell his aftershave, a scent that was oddly comfortable and familiar, as it mingled with the wood smoke, although why it should be so, Morse couldn’t say.

Morse leaned back, then, against the log, his body aching suddenly. Suddenly, he felt completely drained.

 

“What was the point of it all?” he sighed.

“What was the point?” Bixby asked.

“It won’t make a difference. If the world is hurtling itself toward destruction, there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

“Well, maybe not,” Bixby said. “But we can certainly slow it down a little. That might be all that it needs.”

 

Morse looked at him questioningly. 

 

“Next year, somewhere, a Soviet radar system might make an error, send a message that the US has launched an attack. A lieutenant colonel will receive his instructions to respond, but he’ll have a moment of doubt. Is it true or is it an error? And he won’t turn his key. And the world will live another year.”

“And somewhere, a Soviet teenager will secretly play a pop album, and think, they can’t all be bad. And an American housewife will sob over a paperback copy of Doctor Zhivago, and she’ll think, a culture that produced this, can’t be so terrible as they make out.” 

“Or there might be another Bay of Pigs, and the people will tell their leaders enough is enough...”

 

“What’s the Bay of Pigs?” Morse asked.

“Ah,” Bixby said. “I suppose your being a snob about pop culture isn’t to blame for that one, old man. Better brush up on the events of the past five years before you go in for your police training.”

Morse began to protest, but then nodded, taking the advice in the spirit in which it was meant. He could see the wisdom in it. There must be a lot that he had missed.

He’d be wearing a mask of sorts, too, from here on out.

 

“The point is. One day everyone will have had enough of a mad game. And then the wall will fall,” Bixby said.

“And all will be right with the world?”

“Yes,” Bixby said, slowly.

Morse looked up from the fire, looking searchingly into Bixby’s face, sensing a caveat there.

“Until something else starts brewing in another part of the world, and the whole sad, inevitable process begins again,” Bixby added.

 

Morse said nothing. “I suppose it will never end then, will it?” he asked, after a lapse of silence.

 

Bixby smiled, but it was a sad thing—the two corners of his full mouth just slightly quirking at the corners. “I don’t know, old man,” he said.

Then he leaned back, tilting his head up to look where the stars, flickering against the black, revolved around them.

“But on a night like this,” he murmured, “a man might believe that anything is possible.”

 

******

They said nothing on the drive back to Headington. Morse had known him for only a few hours, but, somehow, he felt he would miss Bixby.

Or whoever he was.

Doubtless he would never see the man again. As soon as Morse stepped out of the car, he would disappear, back into a world of intrigue and masks and gold gambling chips that shimmered and shone in the red glow of party lights.

The man would disappear, and all traces of the day with him.

Just as the past five years had disappeared in a crackle of flame.

 

And it was only now that believed that it just might be possible, that he might break away from his past.  

He leaned slightly over towards the driver’s seat, trying to keep the motion subtle, so that he could look in the rearview mirror—and it was true—it was if he could see the numbers and the formulas and the equations falling away, falling far behind him. 

 

Bixby chuckled softly. “What are you doing?”

Morse straightened in his seat at once. “Nothing,” he said.

 

And soon the streets were increasingly familiar. He would go home and never look back....

.....but what, exactly, did the future hold for him?

 

Did it make any sense, at all, returning to the Thursdays? Surely, the Inspector wouldn’t need him anymore. The case was finished. It was done.

 

So where would he go now?

 

He wasn’t sure. But it seemed probable that the Thursdays would allow him to stay with them one more night...

...or what was left of it. It seemed like it might be nearly morning.

At any rate, he just wouldn’t feel right if he didn’t at least thank them before he went. . . .

Well.

Wherever it was he was going.

 

Bixby turned at the corner, and Morse gazed out the window at the familiar street. There was Richardson’s, with its wide windows, and he was nearly to the Thursdays’ now, and would the Inspector still be angry with him? And how would he explain where he had gotten his folder of fake documents? And would they possibly turn him into a fraud just like Bixby? And . . .

“Stop!” Morse shouted.

Bixby startled, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror.

“What?” Bixby asked at once. “What is it?”

 

Morse seized Bixby’s shoulder, and he could hear himself shouting, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

“Sweet Jesus,” Bixby blurted, in an unBixbylike drawl, as he hit the brakes. “What the ...?”

 

But Morse was already tearing out of the car. “Of all the sloppy, stupid mistakes. It’s right there! The proper way is right there! Right in front of them!”

Morse felt as if was trembling with rage. Didn’t they know the horrors that might be brought down on one for a mistake like that? How could they be so foolhardy?

“Their mistakes are so egregious, it’s almost as if they were made deliberately!” Morse shouted. “The proper way to spell it is right there, right on the company sign!”

 

And then, Morse’s heart leapt to his throat and his voice was gone.

 

He could only stare in disbelief at the posters—the first, an advertisement for Cadbury Chocolate, was a glossy promotional piece disturbed by the company for store windows, featuring a picture of a half-unwrapped chocolate bar and the slogan, “A pint and a half of milk goes into every chocolate bar.”

Beneath the glossy poster, was a handmade one, a clumsy thing, one of the store’s own.

 

     _Wednesday    only **!**_

  **2** _For_ **4**   pence!

 **Cant** **bury** **chocolate** **bars**.

 

“Almost . . . . deliberately,” Morse murmured. And it _was_ deliberate. It wasn’t meant to say Cadbury, but rather Canterbury.

Wednesday. 4 o’clock. 24 Canterbury Road.

A time and place.

A place to meet.

 

_“Look," the young man at the cash register said, "we don’t need some college boy coming in here and telling ushow to do our jobs, do we? You people are all the same. So high and mighty. You’ll get what’s coming to you, one of these days, you will. Cocky bastard.”_

 

Why? Why had Mr. Anderson’s son seemed to have despised him so?

And then it dawned on Morse: It wasn’t just the typical rant of town against gown, but rather a speech containing all the rhetoric of the cry of the proletariat.

The Andersons, the father and the son, were a part of the cell.

 

“ _He_ _had_ _information_ _on_ _a_   _communist_   _cell_ , _one_ _that_ _we’ve_ _long_ _suspected_ _has_ _been_ _operating_ _in_ _Oxford_. _But_ _Zorkin_ _got_ _to_ _him_ _first_ , _I’m_ _afraid_ ,” _Bixby_ _said_ , _his_ _voice_ _slow_ _and_ _meditative_. 

 

“It is,” Morse said, breathlessly. 

 

Morse became aware that Bixby had followed him, was watching him, a crease between his brow, utterly perplexed.

 

“It’s a code. These mistakes. To most people, they’re just careless errors. But to anyone walking by, or even just driving by, they are a signal, a signal to pay attention to the message.”

“Like this one,” Morse continued. “One typo in a sale sign. And it becomes an announcement. To those who know to look. Wednesday. 4. 24 Canterbury Road.”

 

And suddenly, it all made sense.

Armada.

 

“That cell, the one Rebmann wanted to tell you about, the Andersons are in it, father and son,” Morse said. “Two _A_ s. Armada. Rebmann wanted to pass on the names of those he found out were a part of the cell. And Michael Adams makes the third, the third _A_. . . .”

“ . . .  And you said, that Adams told his wife that he was conferring with a colleague about seventeenth-century literature. Professor Richmond gives a seminar on Milton every other year. It’s Richmond. It is, I know it. He’s the _R_. The Andersons and then Adams and Richmond ...  and that leaves only a _D_ and an _M_ and . . .”

 

He felt the sidewalk sway under his feet.

 

“It was that man. And it was . . . was me. It was me . . . all along.”

 

He felt as if the world was going gray at the edges. How could he have been a part of a group and still have been so alone? How could he have not known? How had he lost himself so completely as to have become a pawn in a game he knew nothing, cared nothing about? 

Why had he given up asking?

 

He went to the curb and promptly sat down.

 

 

“It’s me,” he said. “It’s me.”

 

And then he could say no more; he could only sit and look into the darkened street.  

 

The next thing he knew, Bixby was sitting on the curb right beside him; the fact that he did not recoil from him seemed a comfort.

“Yes,” Bixby said heavily. “I suppose that was you.” 

Bixby looked over his shoulder, casting a thoughtful look back at the sign.

“Do you believe me?” Morse asked.

“Sounds just as likely as anything I’ve thought of. 24 Canterbury Road. We both know what sort of place that that is.”

“But the Andersons won’t have heard that the place has been infiltrated, that it’s no longer safe. So they haven’t taken down the meeting sign,” Morse said.

“Hmmmmmm,” Bixby said. “That could be so, yes.”

“But I can’t prove it,” Morse said.

“No,” Bixby agreed.

Morse took a steadying breath; as long as this cell was still in operation, it felt somehow, as if his part in it would never be over.

 

“I can’t prove it,” Morse said again, his voice reduced to almost a whisper.

“No,” Bixby repeated. “But if there is anything there at all, I probably can.”

 

***************

Thursday was asleep in a chair by the window of the den when a hand pressed quietly onto his shoulder.

He jumped.

“Morse!”

Morse pulled his hand away with a jolt, as if he had touched the handle of pan that had been left to hang over a burner.

“Don’t creep up on a person so, you may have just taken five years off my life,” Thursday grumbled.  

“Sorry.”  

“Where have you been? It must be, what . . . ?” Thursday glanced at the clock on the small mantle. “It’s gone half four.”  

“I . . . I was on a case.”

“A case?”

Morse nodded and then, silently, pulled a folder out from his jacket and held it out to him.

Thursday frowned as he took it. What was this, then?

On the tab, was the lad’s name, the concealed word blazing out in capital letters for all the world to read: MORSE, ENDEAVOUR. Thursday flipped it open. Inside, attached with a paper clip, was a file photo, the same one that he had seen down at the recruiting office, a small black and white square of a younger version of Morse looking solemnly into the camera, his wavy hair shortened into a leafy cap.

On top of the stack of papers within, was a certificate of honorable discharge.

 

Morse was watching him, closely. “Do you think. . . do you think it’s all right to use it? If I wanted to try for the police?” he asked.

Thursday looked the lad over, considering. With his shirt as rumpled as a balled up piece of paper, his hair a disheveled curling mess, and a blush of pink flushing across his cheeks, Morse gave the impression of nothing so much as a man who had spent the night running for his life.

 

“I’d say it’s fair enough. Looks to me like you earned it. Although you might have thought to ask for a bit of help,” Thursday said.  

The big blue eyes wavered, scanning over his face. “But . . . I didn’t want you to be involved. You know. The . . . the hat stand.”

“That doesn’t go for me, lad,” Thursday said with a laugh.

Morse continued to watch him, looking uncertain.

“You aren’t still angry, are you?”

“What?”

“This morning. You were shouting.”

Thursday furrowed his brow.

Oh. He had forgotten about that now.

“I wasn’t angry, per se,” Thursday said. “I just thought you weren’t using the best judgment and didn’t seem of a mind to listen.”

Morse said nothing.

“You are allowed to ask for help, you do know that, don’t you?” Thursday queried.

Morse licked his bottom lip nervously, and he looked at him even more doubtfully.

It had been a long time, Thursday thought, since the lad thought to trouble anyone for spare change for the bus.

“Well,” Morse said, thoughtfully. “You did help.”

Thursday huffed a laugh. “How’s that?”

“Well, there were a few times, when I wasn’t quite sure what to do, that I just thought to myself what advice you would give.”

“Oh? That right. And did I give good advice?”

“Mostly, sir.”

“Ah, well,” Thursday said, with a soft chuckle. “Mostly, eh? Where did I fail?”

“Well. I just don’t think it’s possible to make _too_ many connections. Surely, it’s better to err on the side of caution, to make too many and then disregard those that you later rule out, rather than to risk missing something.”

“Sounds like a good way to waste a lot of time to me.”

“But you want to be thorough, surely,” Morse protested.  

“Thorough, yes, but efficient, too. Things can move quickly, once you’re on a case. If you take too much time following a false lead, you can lose the trail of a true one.”

“Yes. I think I can see that. Well. The first part, anyway. That. . . things can move . . . rather quickly,” Morse said.

“Hmmmmmm….” Thursday agreed. Morse looked as if he’d been moving rather quickly for half the night. God only knew where all he had been.

“I suppose the case is over,” Morse said.

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Good of you to let me know,” Thursday grunted. “It’s only a little matter of ten murders.”

“He’s dead,” Morse said. “The man who shot that man and the others. The man who shot Rebmann.”

“He was the same killer, then?” Thursday asked. It was a bit of a test: DeBryn had said the bullets were a match—it would be telling if Morse’s story lined up with the evidence the doctor found.

“Yes,” Morse said.

“And the murderer. . . ?”

Morse hesitated, as if deliberating something. “I thought. I thought the police should be notified. But I was . . .” and here he paused, as if searching for the right word, “I was assured it would all be beyond the CID’s reach. Special Branch . . . . “

Morse let the sentence fall off and shrugged, and, truly, the lad needed to say no more.

“A closed loop, then?”

“Yes, sir. So it would appear.”

“Hmmmmm,” Thursday grumbled.

“So,” Morse asked, “You really don’t mind, then, passing on that folder to your friend. Or to Mr. Bright?”

“No. No. If that’s what you’re set on. There will be courses you’ll have to take—on the law, on how to give evidence in court, on first aid. There are entrance exams, you know, on each topic. You get two cracks at each. Fail just one of them twice, and you’re out.”  

A little of that old pride glowed, then, through the drawn face. “I don’t think that will be a problem, sir,”  he said  

Thursday tilted his head, considering him. “You need to be at least 5’10”, too.”

Morse pulled himself out of his regular slouch, lifting his chin slightly. “I’m 5’ 10,” he said.  

“Ought not to have any trouble with the range tests, seeing as how you won Joanie that tiger and coached Sam how to win one to boot.”

A flash of displeasure flickered in his eyes and he snorted softly, dismissively. “That was a carnival game, sir.”

Thursday shrugged. “Still. You should do well enough, yeah?”

“I . . . I think so, sir.”

“Well then. We’ll see when the next group of probationists is starting up, how’s that?”

“All right.”

It looked as if there was still something he wanted to ask.

“Could I . . . is it all right if I stay here? Just for the night? I understand that you don’t need my help anymore. And that I don’t ... I don’t have any money. I mean, obviously. If . . . if you wanted to rent out that room, I suppose. . . I mean. . . I should . . . I should be going, I suppose.”  

“I don’t know about that,” Thursday rumbled. “You’ll be coming into regular pay soon enough, I would think.”

 

It would be for the best if the lad were to stay with them for a while. He hadn’t really had much chance to catch his breath, had he?

And God knows what the men at the section house would make of him.

 

“I mean, really, Morse. Just think about it. Where else in Oxford are you going to find a room like the one we’ve got? Garden murals are the next big thing, haven’t you heard?”  

Morse smiled: it was a cautious thing, an acknowledgement of the private joke between them.

“Sir,” Morse said.

“Besides. It will be damn convenient. You can drive me in. Save Jakes the trouble.”

Morse’s mouth did a funny little twist at that, and he looked down, scrubbing up the hair at the back of his nape.

“What? The police Jag not good enough for you after that red contraption you were driving this morning? Where did that thing go, anyway?”

“It’s not that, sir. It’s . . .”

“What?”

He shrugged one thin shoulder. “I don’t know, sir. I just don’t think Jakes would like that much.”

“Ah,” Thursday said. And he could see the truth in it—picking up the guv’nor wasn’t only a duty; it could be construed as a privilege as well. It might well be that Morse driving him in would leave Jakes with the feeling that Morse was stepping on his toes, it might even set him up against the lad.

“Well,” Thursday said. “You’re right. Knew you’d be a quick study. We’ll just leave that as it is then, yeah?”

“Sir,” Morse said.

**************

Thursday came down the stairs, rubbing at his neck as he walked. His entire shoulder hurt like the devil. That’s what comes, he thought, of spending the bulk of the night sleeping in a chair.

He heard their voices—Win’s and Joan’s and Sam’s—already quick and pattering like summer rain in the dining room, and, again, he listened for a fourth, for that low warble amongst the sparrows, wondering, after all that had happened, if Morse had indeed decided to stay.

He didn’t hear a sound out of him, but when Thursday looked into the dining room, Morse was there, in his corner, looking a little the worse for wear, pushing some eggs about on his plate as Sam filled him in on the highlights of the latest football match.

 

Ah, well.

Early days yet.

 

“Morning, Dad,” Joan said, looking up from her tea.

“Morning,” Thursday said, settling in his chair. “Sam, hand me a bit of the paper, would you?”

“Sure, Dad,” Sam said.

As Sam passed the front section across the table to him, Morse reached out and held it still for a moment, as it crossed before him, so that he could read something on the back.

“Oh. TOSCA has got a programme on tonight,” Morse said, his eyes scanning over the page. “Mozart. Maybe I’ll think of joining again.”

“Joining what?” Thursday asked.

“TOSCA,” Morse explained. “The Oxford Scholars Choral Association. I used to sing with them, when I was up.”

“I never heard of a . . . ,” Thursday began. And then he stopped himself.

He was going to say, “I never heard of a singing policeman,” but, really, perhaps it was all for the best if the lad was keen to join anything at all, so long as he was out and talking to people, working to regain a bit of what he had lost.

“of a . . . of a better idea,” Thursday finished.

Morse smiled awkwardly, looking pleased.

So pleased, that before Thursday realized what he was saying, he added, “Maybe we could all come out and see you sometime.”

“That would be lovely,” Win said. “I’d like to get out a bit more, to be honest.”

Sam looked up doubtfully at this.

Well, would it kill the boy to try to soak up a bit of culture? What was the point of his having worked to have moved his family out of the Smoke, if his son wasn’t going to avail himself of some of the opportunities in Oxford, expand his horizons a bit?

And after all, if he had to suffer . . . .

“You know, Fred,” Win was saying, “That reminds me. Janice and Paul have started ballroom dancing lessons. Jan was asking if we’d like to join them. I thought it sounded like fun. Are you keen?”

“Ballroom dancing lessons, love?” Fred asked weakly.

Joan, Sam and Morse all exchanged quick glances at that and then ducked their heads to hide their laughter.

 

Well, let them have their little joke at the old man’s expense. Just the occasion to show them the _correct_ way to behave when someone suggested they try a little something new.

 

“That would be smashing, Win,” he said, pointedly. 

Just then there was a ring at the door.

“That’ll be Jakes,” Thursday rumbled, taking a last sip of his tea.

 

 Morse’s silent laughter died, and he flicked an uncertain look towards the hall; perhaps it would be best if, just this morning at least, he met Jakes at the door. Morse might not be ready for a run-in with the sergeant after all that had happened the past twenty-four hours.

Still, the lad was going to have to learn to rub along somehow, if it was a career in the force he was after. Not too many professions in which you need to rely on your colleagues more.

“I’ll bring your file, if that’s all right, Morse,” Thursday said.

Morse stopped chewing on a piece of toast, his big eyes wide, as if he was having second thoughts about using it.

“Confound it lad, you earned it fair and square,” Thursday said.

“Fair and square?” More asked, uncertainly, as if the words held some other meeting.

 

Well, what was wrong with that?

 

But then Morse seemed to fold. “All right,” he said.

******

“What’s going on at Richardson’s?” Jakes asked, gazing out the window.  

Thursday looked up from his newspaper as they cruised by. Mr. Anderson was being led off in handcuffs by two men in gray flannel suits, off to where a stern-looking older woman with short hair stood waiting by a car.

“What the hell?” Thursday asked.

“That’s not us,” Jakes said.

“No,” Thursday agreed, somberly. “It isn’t.”

“Sharp suits,” Jakes noted, with an air of admiration. “Special Branch still at it? They locked us out good and proper." 

“I suppose it must be,” Thursday said. “Whatever this is about, the place looks like it will be under new management. I suppose I can tell Morse his ban might be soon lifted from the place, then."

 

Although Thursday suspected that Morse might know more about this than he did.

 

Jakes raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t tell Morse at all, sir.”

“No?” Thursday asked. “And why is that?”

“If he hears that the manager was arrested, he might feel vindicated. You know. Think he was arrested because of those ruddy signs he was so in a twist about.”

************

As soon as Thursday came into the nick, Constable Strange lumbered over to him, his earnest face riddled with concern.

“There’s a young woman, here, sir,” he said, “who wants to speak to you.” He took a step closer then, and lowered his voice, “I tried to ask her if someone else might help, but she says she’ll speak only to you. She was quite . . . adamant about it, sir. Made a bit of a scene.”   

 

That’s when Thursday noticed it: all eyes were on him. The moment he looked up, every constable in the place seemed to turn away, towards a bit of filing or back to checking over some paperwork.

 

Oh, for. . . .

 

Most likely, it was some woman he had to nick for soliciting, someone whose behavior had been so flagrant, he couldn’t look the other way, who had decided to come back for a little revenge, to embarrass him, to create a scene to get the station buzzing with gossip.

“Constable,” Thursday said, with a curt nod.

When Thursday stepped into his office, however, he stopped short at the door in surprise: the woman in question was not at all the type he had been expecting. She was a young woman, with smooth dark hair, wearing a prim gray coat and matching beret, her face as fresh and open as any schoolgirl’s. She could easily be a friend of Joanies’s.

Except that she was looking daggers at him.

“Who are you?” she asked, shortly.

Thursday took of his hat, nodding. “DI Fred Thursday, Miss. The constable said you wanted to speak with me?”

“I do,” she said. “Where’s my brother? Why have you taken his things?”

“Your . . . your brother?”

“I was going upstairs. To put some linens away in the spare room . . . in my brother’s old room. And all of his things had disappeared. His trunk, his record player . . . everything.”

“Ah,” Thursday said.

“I tried to ask my mother about it. I thought she had finally thrown it all out. We had a terrible row. And that’s when my father told me that a police officer had taken it all. A DI Fred Thursday from the Oxford City Police.”

“So you must be. . .” Thursday began. What had Morse called her?  “Ah, yes,” he said, “Joycie.”

She blinked. “Joyce,” she corrected, as if forbidding him to use the endearment of a nickname. “Joyce Morse.”

She tried her best to look cold and fierce and all business, but then, her jaw was trembling, slightly.

“How did you know my name?” she asked. “Do you ... do you know where he is? Endeavour?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! Morse begins his new life with some help and encouragement from the Thursdays, (Thursday helps with work, of course, and Win and Joan with his "people skills" -- or, ummmmm, they try, anyway) 
> 
> He also tries to make amends with Tony by telling him the truth of his past, uncovers the truth about Bixby, finishes his training and is assigned his new partner and station.....  
> Thanks for reading!


	14. Chapter 14

 

Thursday took the familiar route home. The young woman in the passenger seat beside him looked out of the window, her brown eyes darting sharply, as though she suspected to see Morse with every turn.

“I’ll kill him. Five years. Did it ever occur to him I might have been worried?”  She scowled, then, and answered her own question. “No. Of course not.” 

She slumped back into the seat, crossing her arms.

 “I can’t believe he would not write to be for five years. He promised me. He promised me when he left for the army that he would.”

 

Thursday kept his eyes firmly on the road, careful not to give anything away by his expression.

 

He knew that Morse would not appreciate his telling anyone about his past, but, on the other hand, the way that he had flicked a cautious look at the door when Jakes had come ‘round that morning, led Thursday to conclude that—although the lad had pulled off whatever caper he had undertaken successfully—he did not seem as if he would be up to an angry sister's full-on attack.

“Miss,” Thursday said. “Perhaps it’s not my place to say. But family’s family. I think you should know that I’m sure Morse would have written to you if he could.”

 

She seemed to still at that, and then turned her face to his sharply. “What do you mean?” she asked. “How could it be possible that he would be prevented from picking up a pen for _five years_?”

 

Thursday took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled sharply. There was no easy nor euphemistic way to put it.

But the girl was quick enough—she seemed to understand something written in his expression, and her brown eyes went wide.

 “Something happened to him, didn’t it?” she said.

 

Thursday shrugged by way of cautious agreement.

 

She sat for a moment, looking stunned. “Pop always said that they had a row,” she said quietly. “The night before he left. That he wasn’t surprised not to hear from him.”

“Hmmmmmm,” Thursday hummed noncommittally.

 She looked out the window, watching as the steeples and arches sailed by amidst white whirls of summer clouds.

“I should have known,” she said, in a low, fierce voice. “I can’t believe this. Those goddamn  . . . ”

 

Thursday raised his eyebrows, surprised by her vehemence.

 

She turned to him then. “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” she said. “My mother. . . . she’s been a good mother to me, but, there’s no point in lying about it, she was awful to Endeavour. And Pop was no better. I could understand that he wanted to go. I was happy for him, when he got into Oxford. But I was sorry, too. He was . . . our parents . . . well, my parents . . . it was just nice to have him around the house, is all.”

“Hmmmmmm,” Thursday said.

“I didn’t believe it at first. That he would just disappear without at least leaving me an address. But they . . . .”

She shook her head.

“I went to the police.” 

Thursday’s grip on the wheel tightened. What was this? Had there been a report on the lad, and still no one had looked properly?

“But they all know our father, the police in Lincolnshire. And _not_ because they’re friends,” she added pointedly. “It made sense that Endeavour had left, they said. They knew that he and Pop didn’t get on. He’d turned twenty-one. He’s free to do as he likes, they told me.  And, anyway, I was sixteen, so I couldn’t file a report, at any rate. They said one of my parents would have to.”

“And neither of them did,” Thursday said, unable to bite his tongue any longer.

“No,” Miss Morse said simply. “Not that I ever heard.”

He pulled onto his street, and the young woman beside him went still. Morse was there, out front, trimming the wild shrubbery between the drive and the brick wall that divided their front drive from the neighbor’s.

With his curling hair, red-gold in the sun, he was unmistakable even from the back.  Miss Morse’s breath seemed to catch in her throat.

Morse turned around at the sound of the car pulling into the drive.

 

 “Endeavour!” Miss Morse shouted.

Morse’s eyes went wide in recognition, and for one mad moment, Thursday thought he might actually try to make a break for it.  He lowered the clippers and looked about, seeming almost to panic when he realized he was trapped between the house, the car in the drive, his sister, and the brick garden wall.

She seemed to sense it, too, that Morse was looking for some way to flee the scene, because she took his arm and pulled him forward into a hug.

For all that he had spoken fondly of her, Morse seemed to go stiff in her embrace, his eyes still wide, looking at Thursday over her shoulder.

“Hello, Joycie,” he managed.

She held him out, at arm’s length, as if to better assess him. “Where were you? What happened? Are you all right?”

Thursday frowned when Morse’s stunned blue gaze slid over to him; no doubt he was wondering what he had told her. He himself was incapable of answering any of her questions, it seemed.  

 “Why don’t we go in for a cuppa, eh?” Thursday asked, trying to take Morse out of the spotlight.

“All right,” Morse said. “Is that all right, Joycie?” He gave Miss Morse a wan and encouraging smile, and it seemed enough, for the time being, to mollify her.  
 

“What? Oh, yes. That would be lovely. Thank you,” she said.

She tried to return his smile, but it was a weak thing, as if she already knew he was determined to evade her.

******

“How are you?” Morse asked, once Win settled them at the dining room table, which had been set with a fresh white cloth and Win’s best china.

“Fine,” his sister said. “It’s you I’m wondering about. What happened?”

He hesitated. “I’m all right.”

He kept his face carefully guarded; it was almost as if he was talking to a clerk in a store rather than his sister.

 

There was a pointed silence, and then Miss Morse settled her cup into its saucer and looked at him frankly.

“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?” she asked. “You’re not going to tell me what happened?”

 

Morse looked down, making a study of a blue rose on his cup for a long while, before saying, in a voice hardly above a whisper, “Joycie. Please don’t ask me.” 

There was a finality to the words that was hard to hear.

 

“Are you angry with me?” she asked.

Morse looked up from the cup then, surprised. “No. Why would I be?”

“Because maybe you should be. I should have done more. I shouldn’t have listened to anything they had to say.”

“It’s not that,” he said. “I know what they’re like. It’s just  . . .”

“What?”

“I just don’t want you to worry about it. I just don’t want you to know. It’s all over and done. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

She laughed then, a weak and watery sound that seemed to catch in her throat.   “Don’t want  _them_  to know, more like,” she said.

“No,” he agreed. “I don’t.”

 

Joyce Morse opened her mouth to protest, but Morse seemed to find his voice.

 

“I know what they’re like Joycie. You won’t mean to say anything. But . . . I know it’s hard. That drip, drip, drip. I just . . . I just don’t want to give them the satisfaction.”

“ _Satisfaction_?” Win blurted. “You can’t mean that, love.”

And Thursday quite agreed with her. He and Win had been keeping quiet, keeping in the background, keen on giving the siblings the chance to catch up, but that was going a bit too far, surely. It was clear Cyril Morse, the old bastard, didn’t care much for Morse, but no father could ever, no matter how estranged, take any delight in knowing his son had been held captive by a madman for five years.

 

Thursday was just getting ready to open his mouth to speak, when he noticed Joycie’s thoughtful expression.

She didn’t seem inclined to disagree.

“All right,” she said, simply.

 

Morse released a shuddering breath. It wasn’t until then that Thursday noticed how stiffly he had been holding himself.  

Thursday’s eyes met Win’s, and she shook her head, almost imperceptibly, as if to tell him to let the matter drop.

 

The rest of the visit was filled with all the niceties: the small talk, the bringing up-to-date of acquaintances, the assurances to keep in better touch. It was all very civil. And all very unsatisfying.

 

Surely, the lad should tell his own  _sister_  the truth.

 

 

Morse seemed to be able to read Thursday’s thoughts, because, almost as soon as the door was closed behind her, he turned to him.

“She’s my little sister. I can’t  . . . I can’t tell her something like that,” he said.

Thursday sighed.

“What?” Morse asked.

“Nothing,” Thursday said. “It just doesn't sit right, somehow.”

"Why?” Morse asked, lifting his stubborn chin in challenge. “Why shouldn’t I have my hat stand, too?”

“Hat stand’s not for everyone and everything, Morse.”

 

Morse said nothing for a long while.

Then he said, “It’s not just angles and geometry.”

Thursday frowned, perplexed. It was one of his conversational lurches that were a tad difficult to follow.

 

“That’s not the reason I won Joan the tiger. It was my father. Who taught me how to shoot. When I was 12, the first Christmas after my mother . . ..” He let the sentence drift away gently, and added, “My father bought me a pistol. He used to take me out on the common, after rabbits. Make a man.”

And then he turned away and went slowly up the stairs.

And Thursday somehow was given to understand that that was all Morse planned to say on the subject of his family, of his childhood. It was all just another something to let drift off into the rear-view mirror.

 

**************

Thursday and Win sat in the dining room, having a late night cuppa. The house was quiet— it was just the two of them, just as it was in the early days of their marriage. Somehow, they had come full circle.  By God, the years had gone quickly.

 

Sam had gone to see a friend off who was joining the army, and Morse and Joan had gone to meet with Joanie’s friends from the bank up at the pub.

 

Win was pouring herself a fresh cup, when there was a bang from the front door. “We’re home,” Joan called from the hall. In a moment, she appeared in the doorway.

“Where’s Morse?” Thursday asked.

“He went straight up to his leafy bower. He’s had his limit, I suppose,” she said, collapsing into an empty chair.

Win laughed. “What’s that mean, his  _limit_?”  

“His ‘talking to people limit,’” she said, with a sigh. “It’s hopeless.”

“What is?” Win asked.

“ _Morse_  is. We were all talking about a new band, The Wildwood? When he up and suddenly blurts out, completely out of the blue, “So, what did you think about the Bay of Pigs?” Talk about putting a dampener on the party.”

“I’m sure he was just trying to make conversation,” Win said.

 

Privately, Thursday thought that the question was most likely the lad’s inelegant way of catching up on a few events that he had missed, but he said nothing.

 

“I realize that,” Joan said stiffly. “But honestly, what’s one to say to that? ‘Oh, I don’t know, Morse. I was bloody terrified?’”

She shook her head in dismay.

“The sad thing is . . .   a few of my friends sort of like him. Those big blue eyes . . . they’re all a-swoon. If only he would just sit there . . . and ... I don’t know . . . not talk. He’d have better luck if he went back to just keeping quiet, to tell you the truth.”

“Joan!”  Win said. “I certainly hope you didn’t tell  _him_  that!”  

Joan looked offended. “Mum! Of course not!” Then she shrugged, “but it’s true just the same. I guess . . . I guess I can’t help but wonder. If it’s not unkind, encouraging him with this police business.”

“What do you mean by that?” Thursday rumbled.

“He just doesn’t belong here.”

“Joanie,” Win clucked.  

“I mean, not the house. But in our world.”

“Not that space man theory of your brother’s,” Thursday said. “Because I found out the lad is from Lincolnshire.”

“Dad,” Joan said, rolling her eyes. “You know what I mean. He’s gown, not town. He really ought to go and pick up his degree.”  

“But he seems so  _set_  on the police,” Win said. “Can’t you . . . you know . . . help him out a bit?”  

“I’ve been trying. I’m not a bloody miracle worker. I don’t know what happened to him, but, whatever it is, I don’t think it’s to blame for _this,_ ” Joan said.

 

She said the word “ _this”_ with an odd sort of emphasis, as if something was wrong with Morse’s whole person.

 

“I think he was off before whatever it was that happened, happened. Maybe it’s why he got into whatever trouble he was in in the first place,” Joan concluded.

 

Thursday was about to grumble his disapproval at Joanie’s words, when he realized that the same thought had crossed his mind when he first saw that photo of Morse, his face full of uncertainty and need, in Anthony Donn’s photo album.

 

“Well,” Thursday said. “If it was as bad as all that, perhaps I should go and have a talk with the lad.”

But Win was already rising from her chair.

“Why don’t you let me go, Fred,” she said.

Thursday hesitated, then nodded. She had, after all, managed to win Morse over enough to uncover his Christian name without resorting to the bursar’s offices at Lonsdale. Perhaps she might have the better luck.

********************

Upstairs, Win found the door to Morse’s room half-open. She had noticed he always seemed to leave it that way.

His room was at the end of the hall, so it was private enough as it was, as there was no danger of anyone passing, but Win felt certain he left it thus because he couldn’t bear to close it.

She approached the door and knocked softly. “Morse?” she asked.

“Mrs. Thursday?” Morse replied.

“May I come in, love?” she asked.

There was a rustle, then, as if he was sitting up on the bed. “Yes,” he replied.

 

She rounded the corner and, sure enough, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, near the open window. The garden murals on the walls looked less fantastic, more real, in the odd half-light, the slightly-off center and dreamworld colors—chosen from whatever he had found leftover in the shed—muted in the glow of the moon and streetlights outside. 

An aria was playing softly, the soprano voice soaring, and, as Win came into the room, Morse reached down to the record player beside the bed and lifted the needle, returning it to its stand.

 

“Hello, Morse.”

“Mrs. Thursday.”

 

There was something guarded and strained in Morse’s expression, as if he were struggling with circles of thoughts and words that he was trying to set in order, trying to tame.

 

“Have a nice time down at the pub?”

It was the simplest of questions, but it was enough to cause the dam burst.

 

“Bloody awful,” Morse said, as if it was a relief to say it. “I don’t understand Joan’s friends at all. How they can waste their lives discussing such claptrap? It’s beyond all understanding.”

 

Win couldn’t help but be surprised at the sudden salvo of negativity.

 

Morse’s expression immediately closed off again. “What?” he asked, faintly, his eyes roving her face.

 

Win sauntered over and sat on foot of the bed, so that their faces would be level. “I don’t know, love,” she said, as gently as she could. “When someone asks you a question like that, just in passing, you might simply say ‘fine, thanks.’”  

“But I didn’t have a fine time. I had an awful time.”

“I know. And I’m glad you feel comfortable enough to tell me. I always want you to feel you can tell me the truth. And Fred. But, it just occurred to me, you might find it easier, when you are out—say at a pub, for example, with mere acquaintances—to not always be, well,  _quite_  so blunt. You know, you might just follow along with the general mood. Just to get on with people.”

“Well,” Morse said, loftily. “I suppose I just don’t know how to ‘get on with people’ at all. What’s the point of gathering if you aren’t going to talk about what everyone is really thinking? About the vast awfulness of it all? About how pointless it all can seem? That’s why they prattle about these pop bands and soccer matches, you know. It’s to keep them distracted, to cover up their deep sense of existential despair.”

“Some people enjoy talking about music, Morse. Don’t you? It’s just a bit of fun.”

‘Well, yes,  _music_. Music is something real. Something to answer that problem, something that has meaning. But there’s music and then there’s 'music'— Meaningless noise to keep the wolves at bay.”

 

He sighed. “All I did was ask them about the Bay of Pigs, and they acted as if I were . . .” He stopped short. “What is it?”

“What is what, love?”

“The Bay of Pigs.”

“Ah. Well. That refers to a failed military invasion into Cuba, organized by the American CIA. I think in, ’61, it was. It was one of the causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

“Oh,” Morse said. “What was that?”

“That was a standoff between the U.S. and the Soviets over the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba. It might be the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear war, love.”

“Oh,” Morse said again. “Well, I didn’t know that, did I? But, what was the harm in asking? Doesn’t it make more sense to talk about a moment you thought you might be your last, rather than a ridiculous pop band? Isn’t that much closer to the heart of things?”

“The ‘heart of things’ might be a little too much for people just gathering at a pub,” Win said kindly.

“Is it?”

“Mmmmm.”

Morse shook his head. “Well, I just don’t understand that. It’s what everyone’s thinking. Why not say it?”

“Why don’t you try . . .” Win began, “I don’t know. Sticking with the weather. And then, once people get to know you,  _then_  try getting to the ‘heart of things.’”

 “The weather?”

“Hmmmmmm.”

Morse looked at her doubtfully. “I suppose. What?  Do you mean fronts and barometric pressure and so forth?”

“Not quite, love.”

Morse’s face seemed to light up, then. “Or I could talk about beer. I learned a lot from the barkeep. That was interesting, at least.”

“That’s a fine idea. That’s just the sort of thing I mean. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“What....” Morse said, looking slightly affronted, “You mean, practice?”

“Well, it’s just a thought,” she said.

Morse sighed. 

 He tried his best, Win could tell, telling her how lager had been developed in the fifteenth century in Bavaria, about the difference between the yeast used in lager and that used in ale, how the two beverages were brewed at different temperatures . . . and then, finally, he slowed to a stop.

“What aren’t you saying anything?” he asked. 

Win laughed, gently. “You haven’t given me the chance, love.”

“You don’t strike me as a heavy beer drinker,” Morse said.

“No,” Win conceded. "But don't worry about that. You were doing just fine." 

“No," he said, "I was pontificating. It's all right. You can say it.”

 

He seemed to sag, then, leaning forward so his shoulders were in a slouch. “There are too many rules. I give up. I just don’t do small talk,” he said.

For a moment, they sat in silence. Finally, Morse said, “I’m sorry. I know what you’re trying to do. I know you’re trying to be kind, but. . .”

“But what?”

“You’re thinking, I’m like this because of what happened. When the truth is . . .”

 

His eyes welled up, shimmering in the half-darkness, and he turned away.

 

“The truth is, it’s the other way round,” he said softly. “It happened because I’m like this. Because I can’t . . . I can’t ... I just can’t _talk_ to people. And so  . . . even my sister, my best friend . . . it made sense to them that I might just cut them off. Because. . . I don’t know how to . . . I don’t know how to make a connection in the first place.”

 

Win placed a small hand on his shoulder. He trembled for a second under her touch, but he didn’t shake it off.

“I wouldn’t go that far, love,” she said.

“I would,” he choked out. And the words came out as if his voice was breaking. “That’s why no one looked for me. That man even said so. It was the last thing he said before he stopped talking.”

“I know for a fact that that can’t be true, Morse.” 

“It is,” he said simply. “It’s just the way I am.

“It isn’t. Because Fred was out looking for you all yesterday.”

 

Beneath her hand, still resting on Morse’s shoulder, she felt Morse go still.

“What?” he asked, in a voice just above a whisper.

 

“Thought you wouldn’t be hard to find in that flashy car,” she said, letting a trace of a smile into her words.  “He went out to Lake Silence, trying to retrace your steps. Why do you think he was in that chair, when you came home? Still keeping an eye out, he was. He had already called Jakes. He said, ‘we’ll just have to trust the lad knows what he’s doing until morning.’”

“I . . . I didn’t know.”

“Well. Now you do. It’s just as Fred always says, ‘we look after our own.’”

 

He kept his face turned away, but her hand remained on his shoulder; he still didn’t move away, nor move to shake it off. A part of her thought she had best leave all as it was, but another part of her doubted that she would ever get the chance to speak quite this openly with him again.

 

“Do you ever think of telling someone about what happened?” she asked, quietly. “It must be hard, trying to keep five years hidden from everyone.”

“I’m not telling Joycie about that,” he said, in a quiet but brittle voice.

“I understand. She’s your little sister. You want to protect her. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what about your friend, Tony?”

He let out a funny little half-sob, half-laugh. “I couldn’t tell him. He’d never understand. And . . . besides . . . he must hate me now.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t  _hate_  you. Why would you say that?”

“Because he probably thinks I’m a tremendous liar, that’s why.”

The words came out sharply, as if he was relishing them. Then, more quietly, he added, “I’ve had to be so dodgy about everything. And now Inspector Thursday has gone to his house twice about me and . . .” He shrugged and let the sentence fall away.

“Well. There’s one remedy for that. Why not try telling him the truth? You might feel better, to talk about it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, maybe not, love. But there is one thing. If you aren’t to be friends, at least you can leave off on an honest footing. He’ll have known you thought enough of him to have told him the truth. And you’ll know that you tried to bridge the gap. I find we regret trying to make amends and failing more often than not trying at all. Don’t you?” Win asked.

 

“Yes,” Morse said. “No. I don’t know.”

*************

 

Mr. Thompson, the old butler, was still working at the house.

“Mr. Morse,” he said, surprised.

He led him into the study, even though Morse remembered not only the lay-out of the house, but every detail of the place from summers long ago.

 

Tony looked up as he stood on the threshold.

“Hello, Pagan.”

“Hello,” Morse said, softly.

“Inspector Thursday was here asking about you again, did you know?”

“Yes. I didn’t think he would do that. I’m sorry that he bothered you,” Morse said.

“ _Bothered_  me?” Tony asked incredulously.

 

Morse flinched. This was all a mistake. Mrs. Thursday had said it would be for the best, telling the truth, but he had scarcely begun, and already Tony seemed strangely angry.

Morse felt as if the room before him was swimming. He blinked and looked down.

 

“Pagan?”

 

Well. He had come all this way. If he turned and spun out of the room now, he’d try Tony’s patience even further, possibly to the breaking point. It was best to get it all out in a rush, while his voice was still clear.

 

“I’m sorry for what I said,” Morse began. “At the party. I’m sorry if I’ve made things. . . awkward.” He said the words to a small red medallion on the carpet, unable to meet Tony’s sharp gaze.

 

Tony snorted. “You? Make things awkward?”

 

Morse kept his eyes down. He wasn’t sure what to say. Sarcasm wasn’t much like Tony.

 

Tony exhaled sharply through this nose. “I’m sorry, Pagan. I’m just a little tired of having a police officer shadowing the door of my study every other day with questions about you. Questions I can’t remotely begin to answer. I can’t. . . I can’t let worry myself to death about it anymore. I thought we were friends once, but if you feel you can’t . . .”

“It was just . . .” Morse broke in. 

 

Tony paused mid-sentence, his expression closed.

 

“It was just ...You said you were looking for me. At the party. And I never thought anyone was. That anyone would. That’s all,” Morse said.

 

And that had to be all . . .  because he could feel it, his throat growing tight, his voice breaking.

 

“Of course, I was,” Tony said. “We rode in together, didn’t we? I wouldn’t just leave you, if you hadn’t a ride.”

 

Morse couldn’t look up from the point on the carpet. Tony didn’t understand. No one would.

 

“You don’t mean at the party,” Tony asked, then, slowly. “Do you?”

 

Morse flinched again, but said nothing; he wasn’t sure what to wish for—whether Tony would decipher what he had meant, or that he wouldn’t.

 

“Where were you, Pagan? All of those years?”

 

Morse kept his eyes trained on the medallion on the carpet, a jewel of red swirled about with strands of green and blue. It seemed easier, somehow, to begin by saying where he _wasn’t._

 

“I wasn’t in the army,” he said. “I was never in the army.”

“So, what, then?” Tony asked, after a long silence. “Was that all a lie, too? Even the last time we spoke on the phone? Before you .....”

“No,” Morse said, and the word sounded loud in his ears, as if it had lurched out of him, against his will. 

 

 “I did join the army,” he said, more quietly.  “But . . . when . . . I was going to the recruiting station, suddenly... I don’t know. Someone was there. And I smelled something sweet. And when I woke up, I was in a white room.”

 

There was another silence then, as if Tony was struggling to make sense of his words.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m only telling you this because I dragged you to that perfume factory. And because of what I did at the party. That’s all. I’m not looking for . . . I was . . . I was in a white room. And that man was there,” Morse said.

“What man?”  

“That man,” Morse said simply. He wished Tony would stop asking questions. . . he felt that now that he had gotten started, if he stopped speaking, the words would go out, turn off like the snap of a light.  

“He told me,” Morse continued, “He told me I was there on special assignment. That I was slated for Signals. That he was sorry he did what he did, but that it was a top-secret installation, and no one must know its exact location. And he set problems. He gave me problems to solve and I solved them. And. And that’s all. That’s all. That was my life and . . . and that was all.”

 

And he kept his eyes on the red medallion, but it began to shimmer further before his gaze. Morse blinked and swallowed.

 

Tony was silent for a moment. And what else could he be? He would never understand it. How could he when Morse didn’t understand how it had all happened himself?

 

“Are you saying, what . . . exactly? That you were. . . abducted? Held. . .  hostage somehow?” Tony asked.

 

Morse wasn’t sure what to say. He opened his mouth, but before he could find any words, an odd sort of sound erupted out of him, and he himself couldn’t tell whether it was a laugh or a sob.

It sounded so incredible, the way Tony—dear level-headed and efficient Tony—said the thing . . . it was unbelievable, he knew. The words sounded almost comical, coming out of his mouth, spoken with that perfectly modulated upper-crust accent.  Tony could never believe that such things happen. Not in his perfectly secure and ordered world.

 

 “Pagan?” came a voice. And . . . there was a hand on his shoulder, but it wasn’t gripping it, it wasn’t twisting him to smash his face up against the wall and  _I just want you to get right._

 

“Pagan? What man? Problems? You mean, what? Mathematical problems? But you were reading Greats, you were never . . .”  

 

Tony seemed to stiffen, as if he had understood something.

 

“Oh my God. Do you mean Professor Durrell? Pagan?”  

 

The world was beginning to spin and fade; Morse felt light, somehow, as if he were becoming a ghost, a shadow, at last.

 

“I have to sit down,” he said. And before he knew what he was doing, he had folded himself up, just as he was, so that he was sitting on the carpet of Tony’s elegant study.

It was pathetic, it was ludicrous, here he was sitting on the floor in the middle of the carpet... a part of him willed his legs to move, to help him to stand, but it was if he had gone completely numb.

 

“Oh my god. That bastard. All those times he. . .  He was always. . . I always thought.... Oh my god,” came a voice from far above, as if from atop a distant mountain, high in the clouds where the air was pure and where people dwelt untouchable.  

 

“I have to go,” Morse said, weakly. But he didn’t think he could stand. 

“I thought it was so odd,” Tony said. “All that had happened at Lonsdale. The shooting. And then you suddenly turning up. Right in the same week.”  

 

Morse saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and he realized that Tony had crouched beside him. “Pagan? Is that how you got away, then? When Durrell was killed?” 

Morse nodded. “I left.”

“Well of course you left.”

Morse shook his head. Tony made it sound so easy, as if that was the obvious choice, when in reality, finding the strength to go down those stairs had gone against five years of experience that had taught him otherwise.

 

“Is that how you came to be living with that detective, then? What? Did he find you there, at the crime scene?” Tony asked.

Another yes or no question; this was getting easier.

Morse nodded.

“Christ,” Tony said. “When he said you wouldn’t talk to him, I thought you were just being stubborn, but . . .” He could feel Tony’s eyes darting over his face, and Morse was afraid to meet his gaze, afraid of when he would ask it.

 

And why  _hadn’t_  he left? Why _couldn’t_ he have gotten away earlier? And I tried . . . and I tried until I . . .

 . . . gave up trying.

 

“Pagan?” Tony asked.

Morse couldn’t help it; he turned and looked, and Tony’s face, so uncharacteristically grim, was just inches from his. For a moment, Morse thought that perhaps he had managed to stand up after all, but then he remembered that Tony had crouched down beside him.

“Pagan? Why are you left handed now? When you held my lapels, at that party, it seemed as if you couldn’t grasp properly with your right.”

This wasn’t the most difficult question—he simply had to parrot that man’s theory word for word.

He had been told it often enough, in those early days.

“That man said that left-handed people, on average, have a more developed right hemisphere—the part of the brain that specializes in spatial reasoning, abstract mathematics and the ability to rotate mental representations of objects. That it would be helpful if I switched over.”

 “So, what happened to your hand?” Tony asked.

“I kept forgetting.”

“Forgetting?”

“Yes. So . . . he fixed it.”

“ _Fixed it_?” Tony asked. “You mean  . . . he  _broke_  it?"

“Yes," Morse said. "That’s how I knew it was all a lie.”

“What was a lie?”

“That I wasn’t working for the British government.”

Tony looked horrified, almost sickened. Morse had to turn away. He wanted to tell him that it was all right. It had been terrible, yes, but it wasn’t so terrible—it was over quickly. It was nothing, really, in comparison to all of those endless mind games, the games he never seemed to be able to win.

 

 “Five _years_?” Tony said. “How could this happen?”

Morse kept his face turned. It was what he had feared Tony would say. Jakes was right about him all along. He should have tried harder. He never should have given up.

 

“So, were you at his house? Right here in Oxford? Were you at his house the whole fucking time?”

Morse nodded, uncertainly. That sharp note was new, it was so unlike Tony’s typical clipped and jaded cadences. He felt as if he could scarcely breathe, but he deserved it. He deserved it all.

This had been a terrible idea. Better for Tony never to know and to hate him for his secrets and lies then to hate him for knowing just how low he had sunk, but it was too late now.

 

“Yes. I don’t have any excuse. I wish It hadn’t happened. I’m sorry. I never meant for it to have happened. I’m sorry I’m like this. I don’t mean to be,” Morse said.

Tony, it seemed wasn’t listening. “I just don’t understand how this could happen,” he murmured.

“I know you can’t,” Morse said. “It would never happen to you. Even Bruce would have looked for you. As poorly as you all get on, he’s fond of you. But there’s something wrong with me. I can’t . . .  talk to people. It wasn’t so impossible to believe, was it, that I might disappear? So I’m out of that room. But I’m in it, too. I’ll always be in it. You think it’s so easy.”

“What’s easy?”

“Getting on with people. It’s not that I don’t try. But it’s always like I’m talking from far, far away. Even when I’m right there. It’s like I’m a shadow. And I talk but it’s always like I’m talking from far, far away, isn’t it?”

 

And his words were flying, spiraling out of control. “I’m always far away,” he said again, in a flurry of words, but a hand on his shoulder was pulling him closer.

Morse tried to shrug the hand away, but the grip tightened, and he struggled under it.  

 

“I have to go,” he said. But his legs were like rubber beneath him. He felt on the verge of passing out, like he couldn’t breathe properly.

“Pagan?” came a voice from far away.

 

And the arm drew him in, until his face was buried in clean, warm cotton. And he wasn’t far away. His face was buried against Tony’s chest, rising and falling with his breath.  

Morse’s eyes slid closed as he leaned into the warmth, and he worked to slow his breathing to match the rhythm of Tony’s. And then he could feel the stir of breath, too, in his hair, as a face above nuzzled softly in his curls. 

He felt he was on the edge of consciousness, and he must have been, he must have dreamed it, because it made no sense.

 

“I’m sorry, Pagan,” Tony said. And he planted a kiss somewhere at the top of his head.

*********************

 

Thursday wasn’t sure what to make of it.

The lad went in for training on time, went through all the motions. He listened to his records and helped with the washing up.

 

He worked in the garden until it was the showplace of the neighborhood. Win even had a tea out back, with her girlfriends, something she had always wanted to do once they had the place all sorted out. They had simply never gotten 'round to it before now. 

 

He sat in his chair in the corner at breakfast and at tea— but somehow, he was eerily silent again, had been, ever since that night he came home from the pub. He was preoccupied about something, that much was clear. 

Every conversation of late went more or less the same way—his replies limited to one or two words, or even just an expression.

 

“You all right, Morse?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why don’t you go up to the pub with Joanie?” 

An alarmed face.

 

“Exam today?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which one?”

“Giving evidence in court. “

“Got a case of the nerves, do you?”

An affronted face. 

 

And what was with the letter m? The lad had been to Oxford. Surely, he knew there were other letters in the alphabet.

 

It was like pulling hen’s teeth.

 

Thursday snapped the paper open, scanning the headlines, trying to draw some reaction out of Morse other than stretches of silences.

“What’s this? Says here the Andersons have been arrested. Money laundering and embezzlement. They’re keeping the details quiet.”

“Mmmmmmm,” Morse said.

“I suppose you’ll be allowed back at the grocer’s now.”

“Mmmmmmmm.”

 “Jesus. It’s that don. The one I met at Lonsdale who told me to ask Lorimer about you. He’s been nicked, too, evidently. _Espionage?_ Christ.”

“Mmmmmmm.”

 

Thursday lowered the paper, regarding Morse suspiciously, but he looked innocent enough, chewing a piece of toast, his eyes cast down, looking thoughtfully at his plate.

“Funny, isn’t it? Here I am, a detective inspector, and I haven’t an inkling of any of this.”

Morse shrugged one thin shoulder and smiled awkwardly.

“Funny,” he agreed.

 

Thursday snorted. He’d gotten one intelligible word, at any rate. His eyes returned to the paper, and he flipped the page.

“Fenix Industries charged a 1.2 million pound fine.” Thursday said.

“A fine!” Morse shouted. “That’s all!”

Thursday snapped the paper down.

“What’s this, Morse? I didn’t even tell you what they’d done yet to earn it.”

Morse opened his eyes wide, and then shrugged helplessly. “As much as they charge for a few ounces of perfume, I suspect any penalty would be appropriate, wouldn’t it, sir?”

Thursday regarded him steadily and then returned to his paper. 

 

 

He’d had some hand in all of this, that much was clear. He was a terrible liar, and most likely would make for a pretty poor police officer.

But Thursday felt certain that, one day, he’d be a pretty good detective.  

***********

Morse was about half way through his training, when, one Saturday afternoon, he returned to Lake Silence, to the palatial stone house that had been Bixby’s.

Perhaps it was the crisp hint of fall in the air, the turn of yellow and red in the trees, that led him to feel so oddly contemplative, but he suddenly felt the need to say some sort of goodbye to the elusive man who he suspected may have helped him out of his trouble with Louis and Singleton more than he might ever know.

 

It wasn’t as if he had been able to say a proper farewell on the night that Bixby had left, depositing him in the Thursdays’ drive.

“Well, goodbye, then,” Morse had said, closing the door to the red Jaguar.

“I wouldn’t say goodbye, Morse,” Bixby said. “After all, if you are going into the police, we’ll be colleagues of sorts, won’t we?”

Morse smiled. “I suppose.”

 

Although what could possibly happen to bring the Oxford City Police working together with the CIA was beyond Morse’s imaginings.

 

“And, don’t forget, we’re all neighbors, in a sense, aren’t we, old man?”

“Right,” Morse said, accustomed, at last, to the man’s games. “Just across the pond.”

“That’s right,” Bixby agreed. “Or just across the lake.”

He smiled and threw the car into reverse, giving a half salute as he pulled out of the drive.

 

He always spoke in riddles. It was the nature of his work, one supposed. Or the nature of Bixby.

 

The house on Lake Silence was deserted. The floors were polished to a gloss, so that they shone like water, and snow-white sheets were cast over all of the furniture. Morse wandered from room to room, hearing nothing but his own footfalls—the place was so still, so utterly without a breath of breeze through an open window, that it seemed that even any ghosts, any centuries-old apparitions that might have inhabited the place, must have packed their bags and left with Bixby.

In the study, Morse opened the drawers of the desk, looking for some scrap of paper left behind, something that might offer some clue about the strange man who had seemed to arrive out of nowhere, like some jaded guardian angel, smelling incongruously of aftershave and Scotch, watching over his steps and then disappearing in a metal-bright red convertible.

But there was nothing. Not a scrap of paper nor a coin nor even a gold gambling chip remained.

 

Outside, out in the gardens, Morse ran across an old man, tough and wiry, a workman’s cap shading his eyes, trimming an enormous hedge of roses, with red roses so full as to be the size of Morse’s hand.

“Hello,” Morse said, hailing him.

The old man looked up, his blue eyes sharp in the folds of his weathered face. “Hiya. Lovely day, eh?”

Yes,” Morse said. “We’ve been lucky this year.”

“Mmmmmmmm,” the man agreed.

 

Oh. Perhaps that’s what Mrs. Thursday had meant by the weather. It had been a smooth enough exchange.  

 

And then it struck Morse: The place looked abandoned, but, if the gardener was out here working, surely _somebody_ was giving him his pay.

“Do you happen to know—does anyone live there?” Morse asked, with a jerk of his head toward the house.  

“Now that the Buchanans have gone bankrupt and moved out, I’ve heard that perhaps the old gentleman might come back,” the gardener said. “Or, at least, one of his grandsons might. Or so I’ve been told.”

“Old gentleman?” Morse asked. “But if the Buchanans have lost the place, it will be put up for sale, surely.”

The gardener looked at him sharply. “The Buchanans? They didn’t ever own this place. They were only ever letting it. The house belongs to the old gentleman. Abram Bezkrovny.”

“Bezkrovny?” Morse asked.

“Russian immigrant,” the gardener explained. “He came to Britain as quite a small lad. His family arrived here at the end of the 1880s.” He lowered his voice and added, “Fleeing the pogroms, you know.”  

He looked at Morse pointedly.

“Oh?” Morse said.

The gardener returned to his roses. “Yep. They came with next to nothing. But built a fortune, the first old gentleman, Mr. Bezkrovny’s father did, in the import-export business.”

 

Morse felt his breath catch.

 

“The import-export business?” Morse asked, weakly.

Hadn’t Bixby said something to that effect?  

 

_“Let’s just say I’m in the import-export business."_

 

“Yep. Family moved away, though. Mr. Bezkrovny bought some place in the States, after the war, emigrated there permanently. Kept this place. Always hoped one of the grandchildren might come back, marry into a title, I think. You know how new money is about titles.”

“The United States?” Morse asked.  

“Yeah. Charleston, it was. Moved half the business there. Any road," the man said, "looks like one of the grandsons might be thinking of moving back here. He's had some of his collection shipped over, I see.”

 

“Collection?” Morse asked.  

 

“Mad about cars, they all of them are,” the man laughed, shaking his head.  “The first old gentleman had one of the first in these parts. Used to watch him go by when I was just a small thing.”

“Ah,” Morse said.

 

It couldn’t possibly be....

Could it? 

 

_Morse snorted and tossed him the keys. “And the red wasn’t yours either, I take it.”_

_“Did I say that?” Bixby asked, with a sphinx-like smile._

 

_“I’m just borrowing it for a bit. I’m sure the Donns wouldn’t mind. They’ve always been so neighborly.”_

_Morse snorted at that. “You aren’t their neighbor.”_

_“Aren’t I?” Bixby asked._

_“No,” Morse said._

 

_“Why do you so often jump to conclusions?”_

 

If the family had moved away after the war, Bixby might have been eight or nine. Morse had heard from Tony before how he and Bruce and their sisters and the other children whose families lived around Lake Silence had had the run of the lands and the lake when they were children. Wouldn’t they have run into Bixby, then? Wouldn’t Tony have had vague memories of another boy in their neighborhood? Is that why they had all acted as if they knew him? Morse had supposed it was part of Bixby’s brand of theater, infiltrating himself into their set, charming them, winning them over so that they were utterly beguiled, so that they imagined that they had known him for ages  . . .  but . . .

 . . . But maybe they really  _had_  known him for ages.

 

“Do you know anything about this grandson? Bezkrovny, is it?”

“Oh, the young ones don’t go by Bezkrovny anymore. Tried to Anglicize the name a bit. Russian-sounding name in the States?” The old man clucked his tongue. “Bad for business, I suppose.”

 

_“Jack Bryton. Sounds like a stage name.”_

_“Does it? Well, it’s not, perhaps, the name I was born with. The United States is, as they say, a nation of immigrants. I might have found it prudent to change my name at one point, for professional reasons.”_

 

Morse felt as if his chest was growing tight, a sinking feeling, like a stone settling under his ribs. It couldn’t be so. It was all too wildly unbelievable to be ture. 

 

“To Bryton?” Morse asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.  

“What’s that? Bryton?” the gardener said. “No.”

 

“Oh,” Morse said, with a feeling of relief. It must have been all a horrendously odd coincidence. Just as Morse should have known. Because it was mad to think that. . .  

 

“To Bixby,” the gardener said.

 

Morse groaned softly and put his hand to his forehead. It made his head hurt even to consider it.

 

Could it possibly be that the secret of Joss Bixby was that he was . . . Joss Bixby? 

 

“It can't be,” Morse muttered. 

“What's that, my boy?” the old man asked. 

“Nothing,” Morse said. 

****************

The lake house was ensconced with the same air of desertion as the big house on the lake. The only way that Morse knew for certain that that night had not been a dream was the mound of black ash in the bonfire pit. Morse combed his foot through it, to make sure no scrap of papers remained.

 

Inside, the place was tidy, as neat as a pin. Morse walked over to the desk and opened the top drawer.

Inside, was a paperback copy of _The Great Gatsby_. Morse scowled. He was certain that that had not been there the night he opened this drawer in search of a pencil.

 

He picked the book up and flipped it open. Inside the cover, written in bold script, was an inscription.

“ _Good luck in all of your endeavors!_ ” it read. _Endeavor_ was spelled in the American style, without the _u_. Right above the word, between the _o_ and the _r_ , was a small editor’s mark with the letter _u_ , inserting it back in, so as to spell his name.  

 

“Ha ha,” Morse said, aloud.

Because no one had ever made a pun of his name before.

 

The whole dashing sentence was signed with an even flashier signature:

Josef Bezkrovny

 

Morse walked over to the bed and collapsed on it. Well, here it was, then. Joss Bixby. The whole damn thing was true, then.

He flipped through the book. He had expected the last passage to be underlined: that paradoxical paragraph that was, on the surface, so full of hope, but—when held in context with the rest of the novel—proved to be one of the most mournful, melancholy passages written in the twentieth century.

Gatsby believed in the green light, and so, most likely, did his namesake, Bixby. Bixby would be sure to take the passage at its face value. But Morse knew the undertext, he knew that that sort of bright optimism was doomed for disappointment.

 

He turned to the passage. But it was not underlined.

 

Morse thumbed through the book then, expecting to find highlighted one of the many passages on lies and deceit. _That_ would certainly be appropriate.

But then again, Bixby had considered all along that he had been telling him the truth.

In his own sort of way. 

 

Morse flipped through the pages again. He felt certain something would be there, some hidden message. This was, after all, how they communicated, wasn’t it?

And then, finally, he found it. An underlined sentence. But it was a surprisingly simple thing.

 

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

 

********

 

“Oh, _Dad,_ ” Sam said, as if he were witnessing some terrible tragedy.

“What?” Thursday said.

Sam exchanged uncertain looks with Win and Joan.

“Dad,” Joan ventured. “Does Morse have any friends? Any at all?”

Thursday scowled. The way they spoke of the lad, you would think he was in kindergarten. 

The lad was doing well enough; he looked smart in his new dark blue uniform, auburn waves tucked back, brass buttons shining. His custodian helmet might look a bit large for his narrow face, but still, he was more neat and trim and austere than the other recruits milling around the parade stand, waiting for the ceremonies to begin.

And then it struck Thursday: Sam and Joan had a point. While the others were engaged in animated conversation, punching one another in the shoulder in greeting, calling out to new arrivals, Morse was sitting quietly in his seat, just as he did in the dining room each morning.

 

This was cause for concern—greater perhaps than his family knew. Coppering was a dangerous enough business as it was—but it was even more dangerous if you couldn’t rub along with people. Morse’s natural reticence, taken with the austerity of his gaze, could easily be mistaken for snobbishness, or, at the very least, sullenness. How could you ask a man to risk his life for you if you went about treating him like something you might find on the bottom of your shoe?

 

Just then, a young recruit, as slight as Morse, but far more boyish, collapsed into the chair beside him, chatting away a mile a minute.

Morse’s nostrils flared slightly, and he looked even more severe, as if he could not quite believe that such a person might dare to breathe his air.

 

Thursday watched Morse sharply, mentally willing the lad to get that look off his face. He was tempted to go over and give him what for.

 It wasn’t as if beggars could be choosers.

 

But fortunately, the young recruit with the dark fringe kept right on talking, either oblivious, or pointedly refusing to take the hint. Thursday chuckled lowly to himself.

It seemed the one recruit who was eager to make friends and rub along with everybody had lighted upon the one of his colleagues who seemed determined to keep to himself.

 

It struck Thursday, then: They might be quite a team. The dark-haired chatterbox getting the witness talking, charming them, cajoling them into relaxing their guard with his own irrepressible earnestness, while all the while, Morse’s uncannily watchful eyes took in the room, noticing the wrong number of place settings or the book left on the floor that might show the chink in the witnesses’ story.

 

In a moment, DI Church, one of his oldest colleagues, was at his shoulder. “Got a likely group of lads this time round. Be grateful for your help in writing up the assignments, Fred.”

“Glad to. We could use a couple over at Cowley. Who’s the lad there, with the dark fringe?” 

“Hmmmm? Oh. His name’s Fancy. People come from Devon, I think.”  

“Might be a good match with Morse,” Thursday said.

 

Church paused and looked at them. “Yes, I can see that,” he said.

 

Church was a copper of the old school. Thursday knew he would make the same calculations as he did.

 

“We worried about Fancy getting through the law exam, you know,” Church said. “Failed the first time ‘round. But Morse saw him through.”

Thursday raised his eyebrows. “Did he?”

“Mmmm,” Church said. “All right, then. That’s one done.”

 

**************

“ _Fancy!?_ ” blurted Morse from the back seat, as soon as they were settled into the car.

 

Thursday’s eyes snapped up in the rear-view mirror. By god, but the lad could look haughty as hell. Didn’t he realize that Fancy might be the one recruit he could have been paired with who, when he opened his assignment docket, would not have blurted _“Morse!?_ ” in a similar vein?

“I thought you were friends.” Thursday said.

“Who said that?” Morse said.

“DI Church. He said you got him through the law exam.”

“That was only because he wouldn’t leave me alone,” Morse said.

 

“Oh, buggar it,” he added, slumping back on his seat. “If we get a car, I’m not listening to his rubbish on the radio.”

“You’ll be on foot patrol, won’t you?” Thursday said. “And if you _are_ assigned a car, it will be for a good reason, so the both of you better keep the radio off and look sharp to what you’re doing. If you miss your man because you’ve been fighting over the Stones versus Wagner, I’ll give you what for, understood, constable?

“Sir.”

 

Morse was silent for a while, and Thursday supposed he’s been duly chastised. But by the next stop sign, he had started up again.

“Do you know what the _first thing_ he said to me was? Fancy? That he joined the force for the ‘social life’ and the ‘crumpet.’” Morse shook his head in disgust.

“And what did you answer to that?” Sam asked.

“Didn’t get the chance,” Morse huffed. “Next thing he was asking me all sorts of questions. It was as if I was being interrogated.”

Sam frowned. “What sort of questions?”

“’Have any hobbies?’ ‘Do you like sport?’” Morse said, emulating Fancy’s quick manner.  

 

Thursday looked back into the rear-view mirror, and Joanie’s gaze met his at once.

“Oh, dear. Say it’s not so,” she said. “That sounds awful.”

Then she rolled her eyes.  

 

Morse looked at her rather severely, as though he suspected that she was being sarcastic, and then he turned again to look out the window.

He leaned his head against the glass and closed his eyes.

“Oh, buggar it,” he sighed.

***************

 

Morse followed Thursday out the door and out into the drive, where Jakes was waiting, standing alongside the shining black police Jag.

And then, to Morse’s utter bewilderment, Jakes tossed him the keys.

“Are you joking?” Morse asked.

Jakes shrugged. “Why don’t you drive? It being your first day and all?”

“All right," Morse said. "Thank you." 

Thursday slipped into the back seat, sparing Jakes any feeling of indignity by riding there. Morse was grateful. He had been worried about starting off on the wrong foot with Jakes, considering some of their past . . . misunderstandings.

 

Jakes slid into the passenger seat, and Morse started up the engine. It was smooth and quiet, the engine purring with a satisfying low rumble.

“Today PC Morse. Tomorrow, detective inspector,” Jakes said.

“Do you really think so?” Morse asked.

“Sure,” Jakes said. “Why the hell not, yeah?” 

 

“I don’t see why not,” Thursday rumbled in agreement.  “We’d see you right, of course. Make sure we get you through your sergeant’s exam.  With the proper encouragement, who knows? What you’ve got to ask yourself is, where do you see yourself in twenty years?”

 

Morse stopped at the red light and looked into the rear-view mirror.

Where did he see himself in twenty years?

 

And suddenly he could imagine it, his reflection changing before his eyes: his face sterner, his blue eyes sharper, his wild russet hair muted into a dignified and elegant silver.

And all of the numbers and equations and terror and hopelessness of those five years would fall away, recede off into the rear-view mirror—just as Inspector Thursday had said they would—to be replaced by an entirely different life, one he was just getting to know. And he would be an entirely different person. 

 

Inspector Morse.

 

Didn’t have a bad ring to it, really.

 

Somewhere in the corner of his perception, Thursday's voice rumbled. "Morse?" he was saying. "Morse?"  

And then, he heard it: a sharp shout.

“Endeavour!”

 

Morse startled, and realized, a moment too late, that the light had turned green. The driver behind them tapped the horn smartly, and Morse hit the gas, with a final glance at the green light.

And Bixby had believed in the green light. And perhaps he, Morse, did, too. Tomorrow he would reach further and strive harder. And the skeletal sevens and long silences would fall way, further and further behind him, borne away like a boat with the current, ceaselessly into the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I had a lot of fun trying out a different AU. And of course having Morse meet Bix . . . all over again! 
> 
> And now, on to the sequel... :O)


End file.
